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THE IRREPRESSIBLE 
CONFLICT IN RELIGION 





wo & 
2, JUN 18 1926 


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THE IRREPRES 
CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


By 
JOHN HERMAN ‘RANDALL 


AUTHOR OF “A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE,” “THE CULTURE OF 
PERSONALITY,” “HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS,” “THE 
LIFE OF REALITY,” “THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER,” ETC. 


07 


DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
148-156 West 23rd Street 
NEW YORK 


Corrricur, 1925 
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


IX. 


CONTENTS 


FoREWORD AV UNB AN MAW Bat ttn 
THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT VS. 
RELIGIONS OF AUTHORITY 


THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT Con- 
TROVERSY . 


THe Doctrines In DIspute: 
WuereE Is tHe TrutH? 


THE REALIZATION OF Gop As 
‘CREATIVE LIFE 


Was JEsus Onty A Man? 


Has Jesus Any MEssaGE For To- 
DAY? | 


Is TuHere A PLACE For F'arru IN 
MopEernN LiFe? 


. RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGA- 


TION: Must THry REMAIN 
THiostitE? . 


Witt Epucation SUPPLANT RE- 
LIGION ? 


PAGE 


116 


146 


174 


203 


230 


CONTENTS 
PAGE 


X. Witt RELIGION OUTGROW THE 


CHuRCH? CORT AGM AMD UH i efleceerrat aa oe BE 
XI. CoNnvicrion AND KINDLINESS: THE 
Way to BrorHERHOOD SY sich Matt 


XII. THe Trutus Men Live By . . 3814 


FOREWORD 


The fundamentalist - modernist controversy 
within the churches, which came to such open and 
almost violent expression in the winter of 1923- 
24, has been a long time on the way, and it will 
not be settled for many years to come. That it 
was inevitable, all who have been familiar with 
religious conditions in this country know full 
well. ! 

The causes go back ultimately to the Protest- 
ant Reformation; more immediately, however, 
they are to be found in the wide-spread advance 
of scientific ideas and methods. ‘That the War 
has also helped, both directly and indirectly, to 
force the present crisis is undeniable. But sooner 
or later, the conflict between the modern view- 
point and the older conceptions of the churches 
was bound to come. It is the irrepressible con- 
flict in religion today. 

Now that it has been precipitated by leaders 
on both sides, thus forcing the majority in all the 
churches to take sides more or less definitely, it 
is earnestly to be hoped that the primary issues 


vii 


FOREWORD 


may not be glozed over, the “quarrel” hushed 
up, and the controversy abandoned, for that 
would only mean another compromise of issues 
and principles that can no longer be compro-. 
mised without fatal results to organized religion. 
It is too late in the day to postpone into some in- 
definite future the solution of these vexed prob- 
lems which the increasing intelligence of this age 
is so earnestly demanding. 

The need of this critical hour for organized 
religion is for more light and less heat,—more of 
the light of calm reason and disinterested inquiry, 
and less of the heat of prejudice and bitterness, 
of crimination and recrimination. In the inter- 
est of that nobler faith that one day will surely 
be, when the truth will set men free, this book 
has been written. 

JoHN Herman RANDALL. 
New York City, 
May Ist, 1925. 


I 


THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 
VERSUS 


RELIGIONS OF AUTHORITY 


ie eep\\N his recent novel, “The Cathedral,” 
fe aq) Hugh Walpole puts the following 
2%] (cu) words into the mouth of Canon Ron- 
poses! der, one of the leading characters of 
the story, “I believe that before many years it 
will become clear to the whole world that there 
are now two religions,—the religion of authority 
and the religion of the spirit,—and if in such a 
division I must choose, I am for the religion of 
the spirit every time.” 

Back of all the theological controversies that 
are dividing the churches today lies this one fun- 
damental question: Where is the seat of author- 
ity in religion? Does it lie in some institution, 
or in some book, or in some person, or in some 
creed; or is it rather to be found deep within 
man himself? This is in no sense a new problem 

1 





IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


in religion, and for those of the liberal faith it 
has long since been settled, but we are forced to 
realize that many old issues that we had supposed 
were buried forever are once again thrusting ~ 
themselves upon the attention of men, and the 
struggle that is now on in the orthodox churches 
for greater freedom in religion is only another 
phase of the age-long struggle between the re- 
ligion of the spirit and the religion of authority. 

‘Former President J. G. Schurman, of Cornell 
University, has called our attention to the fact 
that all religions pass through three stages of 
growth. First, the chief emphasis is placed upon 
the cult, the ceremony, the sacrifices, the ritual. 
These are the important things. The gods are 
not supposed to care much what people believe 
or how they behave. So long as they bring the 
required sacrifices and go through the ceremonies 
with exact punctiliousness, all is well and the 
gods are satisfied. But as time goes by humanity 
reaches the next stage in religious development. 
The cult still remains, the rites and ceremonies 
still persist, but the people pay less attention to 
them than formerly. The whole ritualistic side 
of religion is gradually crowded into a subordi- 
nate position, as the chief emphasis is shifted to 
beliefs. ‘The principal thing now is felt to be 

2 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


theology, doctrines, creeds. ‘Then comes the 
period of creed-making, followed by long cen- 
turies of theological controversies, with their in- 
evitable accompaniments of heresy trials and per- 
secutions of every kind. And then, at last, 
religion passes into a new phase of development. 
People may keep their creeds on record in their 
books or church manuals, or they may discard the 
old creeds entirely, but they no longer feel bound 
by them, for they come to feel at last that the 
only essential thing in religion is the spirit that 
dominates one’s life,—the sum. total of a man’s 
- spiritual attitude toward life. 

It is this second, or theological, stage out of 
which religion is now passing, not without bitter 
struggles and great upheavals within the confines 
of organized religion. ‘The old theological re- 
ligion, based on its creeds and dogmas, is slowly 
but surely dying as the true and genuine religion 
of the spirit is coming to birth in the lives and 
hearts of men everywhere. But the religions of 
authority die hard, and we need not be surprised 
to find that man can only achieve freedom in re- 
ligion, as everywhere else, through his own per- 
sistent and heroic efforts to throw off the shackles 
of external authority in his spiritual life. 

Let us trace briefly the development of the 

3 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


idea of authority in religion as it has been shifted 
from one place to another in the history of Chris- 
tianity. In order to avoid confusion let us de- 
fine authority in religion as meaning the claim to 
command belief and conduct whether or not that 
belief or conduct find inward support in the souls 
and minds of men. Down to the close of the Mid- 
dle Ages it was generally believed that the seat of 
authority in religion was vested in the institution, 
the great and powerful Roman Catholic Church. 
It was held that the keys of heaven and hell had 
been intrusted to this institution, and that, there- 
fore, it controlled the one and only pathway to 
salvation. ‘The Bible was there in manuscript 
form, but the rank and file of the people had no 
access to its pages, and knew little or nothing of 
its contents. The creeds were there to be believed 
unquestioningly, and the church alone had the 
right to interpret these creeds and to tell men 
what they must believe. 

With the coming of the Reformation, the Prot- 
estants broke with the theory of the authority of 
the church; they refused the claim of the Catholic 
hierarchy to be sole interpreters for them of the 
Word of God. If an old historic church, count- 
ing its members in millions, could speak with one. 
voice, and that voice represented the truth which 

4 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


had been, if not discovered, at least ratified by 
every individual member, it would be entitled to 
great respect; it would have great power and in- 
fluence, but even then it would only acquire these 
through having found the inward life in those to 
whom its appeal was made. Even such a voice 
could not act as an external infallible authority 
upon anyone without making his life artificial. 
There is, however, no such voice. Roman Cath- 
olic dogma today does not represent any such 
consensus of opinion within the Catholic Church; 
the more men believe on the mere outward au- 
thority of the church, the less is the power of their 
testimony to the value of the truth. 

The Protestants transferred the seat of author- 
ity in religion from the institution to the Book, 
and at the outset enunciated the right of individ- 
ual interpretation of the Bible. But it was soon 
found that there was no common agreement as 
to the meaning of the teachings of the Bible, 
which was now claimed as the sole authority for 
faith and practice. So many new sects sprang 
up, all claiming the authority of the Bible, each 
one for its own difference from every other, but 
also from a criticism of the Bible itself, that in- 
telligent men soon came to see that a Book which 
carried such widely differing meanings to differ- 

5 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ent people was very far from being an infallible 
authority. ‘The next step was taken when these 
new sects translated their particular interpreta- 
tions of the Bible into their respective creeds, 
thus shutting out all who did not agree with them. 
So that the Reformation, that started on the right 
principle of private interpretation, ended in the 
same fallacy against which it had originally pro- 
tested. ‘The Roman Catholic Church claimed 
that the sole authority rested in the one church 
with its infallible creed. Protestantism now 
claimed that it was to be found in many churches 
with their differing creeds, and nothing was left 
for thoughtful minds but to lose all faith in the 
claims of both. 

When the fact is clearly grasped that the Bib- 
lical literature is the history of a life of growing 
thought and changing practice, it will be seen 
that while the Bible retains the value of much in- 
spired life, it must also contain points of view 
and standards of life and belief which are contra- 
dicted and transcended even within its own 
covers. But in spite of this fact, parts of the 
Bible are still read solemnly to the people as the 
Word of God which cannot possibly represent 
the truth for their lives, nor appeal to them in 
any real or vital sense. The God of Samuel and 

6 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


Joshua is very different from the God of the 
later Hebrew Prophets. It is this that led Mr. 
Blatchford to say that we should never make 
much headway with reform until the truth was 
told about the Bible. 

The next step that is usually taken, when the 
infallibility of the Bible as a whole is abandoned, 
is to make the New Testament our authority. 
Many people who have reconciled themselves to 
the criticism of the Old Testament are fearful of 
touching the New. It is utterly impossible, how- 
ever, to shield the New Testament from precisely 
the same investigation that is applied to the Old 
Testament and to all other literature. You can- 
not apply the canons of historical and literary 
criticism to the Bible as far as the last page of 
Malachi, and then abandon them when you open 
the first chapter of Matthew. The New Testa- 
ment is just as truly a record of developing and 
changing thought as is the Old. If anyone says 
that his authority is the New Testament, I would 
ask him, “Which part of it?” The differences 
between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth 
Gospels, and between the Gospels and the 
Pauline Epistles are very great and important, 
—which is to be your authority? ‘There are 
things in the New Testament, to go back to which 

| 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


now would be unmistakable retrogression. We 
have made great advances upon the New Testa- 
ment point of view in some matters,—slavery, 
the woman’s question, and almsgiving, for ex- 
ample. The passage in Corinthians which de- 
clares the inferiority of woman to man, the theory 
that woman was made for the man, and not man 
for the woman, that she must have her head cov- 
ered in public assemblies, that her glory is her 
hair, and that she must not speak in meetings, 
is still read in churches as if it were the solemn 
Word of God, and yet is there anyone left who 
believes it? In spite of the contentions of the 
fundamentalists, the idea of the infallible au- 
thority of the Bible, in either Old or New Testa- 
ments, is forever gone from the thinking of in- 
telligent people. 

When this is recognized the next refuge is to 
fall back upon Jesus as the sole authority. The 
position taken is that historical criticism must do 
its work upon the New Testament documents to 
find out what the teachings of Jesus really were, 
and then make them our authority. But here 
we are immediately face to face with many diffi- 
culties. One is that of the different conceptions 
of Jesus in the New Testament. Who is our . 
authority? The Jesus of Mark’s Gospel who 

8 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


grows in knowledge, or the Jesus of the Fourth 
Gospel who knows all things from the beginning? 
The Jesus of Peter’s speeches in the Acts,—*A 
man approved of God,” one of whom Peter could 
say, “God was with him,” or the Jesus Christ of 
the Epistle to the Colossians, “in whom dwelt all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily”? These con- 
ceptions are widely different,—which do we take 
for authority ? ; 

Another difficulty is that once we take the view 
to which any historical study compels us, that 
the mind of Jesus was a growing mind, we can- 
not take the view that it ever reached finality. 
At which stage of its growth does it become our 
authority? If Jesus grew in knowledge during 
his lifetime, would he not have continued to grow 
if he had lived longer? If he were among us now, 
would not his opinions on many subjects be dif- 
ferent from what they were then? For example, 
would he now believe in demoniacal possession, 
as he probably did then? Or would he now say 
what he did about almsgiving? How can we 
conceive of a mind as growing, and also as hav- 
ing reached finality, and able therefore to be a 
final authority for us? 

But there is another difficulty. On a consider- 
able number of important questions which we 

9 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


have to decide, there is no clear word of Jesus 
which we can quote for their settlement. One 
of the fundamental problems today as we think of 
the future is that of the proper education of chil-. 
dren. Jesus is not recorded to have said a single 
word on the education question, and we cannot 
cite his authority on any phase of the great prob- 
lem. Among the crucial questions of our time 
is: What share of the profits of labor should be 
given to the manual worker? How to distribute 
wealth more justly is a pressing problem. What 
should be the type of social organization to super- 
sede the old order?’ How can our intense nation- 
alisms be merged into a true internationalism? 
Jesus has left no authoritative word on any of 
the important questions. That there should be 
justice, that love should be the guiding principle 
of life, are clearly his teachings, but our difficulty 
in the practical world begins when we ask in 
what social or industrial or world systems are 
justice and love to be expressed, and on this im- 
portant point the authority of Jesus cannot be 
quoted. 

He did not deal with systems as such. He said 
nothing even of the duty of liberating slaves. 
How to provide for our old people, how to house 
the population in decency, what is to be done 

10 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


about the crying evils of the land problem, 
whether women should have political equality 
with men,—none of these questions were on the 
horizon of Jesus, and it is no wonder that he has 
left no decisive word on these subjects. Every 
business man, every mother, every employee, 
every teacher is facing a dozen questions every 
day which cannot be referred to any word or ex- 
ample of Jesus. That he did lay down funda- 
mental principles, no one denies; but as to how 
these principles should be applied in practice, he 
has left no word. These things show how much 
of unreality there often is in the use of the phrase: 
“Jesus is our authority.” 3 

A good illustration of the “unconscious” in- 
sincerity that exists in this claim is found in the 
discussion on the report of the Divorce Commis- 
sioners in England a few years ago. The ma- 
jority report presented a most interesting docu- 
ment to the Congregational Union of England. 
It began with laying down the absolute authority 
of Christ on the question of marriage as final. It 
also declared that the teaching of Christ on this 
matter was quite explicit, and that it pronounced 
marriage to be indissoluble. One would natu- 
rally expect the document to go on to condemn 
the recommendations for enlarging the grounds 

11 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


for divorce. On the contrary, it ended by recom- 
mending their adoption. ‘This is an instance of 
formally bowing to the authority of Christ, for- 
mally enthroning him in words, and then passing 
on to obey our own judgment as to what ought 
to be done. It would be far more honest to say 
at once that we cannot take the teaching of Jesus 
on this subject as an external authority for our 
guidance today. And when we stop to think 
how vastly different are the problems and needs 
of our age from those of the age in which Jesus 
lived, we realize that it is utterly impossible that 
detailed authority for conduct or for belief should 
be found in his teachings. 

It has been this same belief that there must be 
somewhere an external authority for religion that 
has led to the formulation of all the creeds that 
the various churches hold and teach as containing 
the sole authoritative statement of religious truth 
which men must believe. We have only to re- 
member the origin of all these creeds and the 
sources of the ideas that underlie them, however, 
to realize how far they are from being the final 
statements of truth. And the fact that they elicit 
so feeble a response from the growing, intelli- 
gent minds of today only proves that man has 
outgrown these earlier expressions of truth. 

12 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


As a matter of fact, there has always been, 
right down through the centuries, those spir- 
itually minded leaders within the church who 
have been keenly conscious of the inadequacy of 
the creeds, and, in fact, of all doctrinal statements 
as giving expression to the highest or final truth 
of religion. Here, for instance, is Bishop West- 
cott of the Anglican Church, who, speaking of 
the Thirty-Nine Articles, says: “It is that I 
object to them altogether, and not to any par- 
ticular doctrine. I have at times fancied it was 
presumption in us to attempt to define and de- 
termine what Scripture has not defined. * * * 
The whole tenor of Scripture seems to me op- 
posed to all dogmatism and full of all applica- 
tion.” Or take the testimony of John Wesley, 
after one of the fullest experiences ever given to 
mortal of the action of religion in human life: 
“Tam sick of opinions. I am weary to bear them; 
my soul loathes the frothy food. Give me solid, 
substantial religion; give me a humble, gentle 
lover of God and man, a man full of mercy and 
good faith, a man laying himself out in the work 
of faith, the patience of hope, the labor of love. 
Let my soul be with such Christians whereso- 
ever they be and whatsoever opinions they are 
of.” Or here is a remarkable statement from 

13 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


John Henry Newman, who became a Cardinal in 
the Roman Catholic Church: “Freedom from 
symbols and articles is abstractly the highest 
state of the Christian communion and the pecu- 
liar, privilege’of ‘the: primitive: church,)* ,*)% 
Technicality and formalism are in their degree 
inevitable results of public confessions of faith. 
* * * When confessions do not exist, the mys- 
teries of Divine truth, instead of being exposed to 
the gaze of the profane and uninstructed, are 
kept hidden in the bosom of the Church far more 
fruitfully than is otherwise possible.” 

These witnesses, remember, had all signed 
creeds; they all belonged to churches that bristled 
with dogmatic propositions. Yet what is clearly 
evident is that at the back of their minds lay a 
consciousness, not formulated, and therefore all 
the more powerful, that the strength and vitality 
of religion lay quite otherwhere than in the doc- 
trinal creeds of any or all of the churches. The 
creeds arose out of the speculative, not the re- 
ligious spirit. The “heretics” speculated first, 
and the church met them with counter-specula- 
tions of its own. The ages that produced the 
church formularies were the least vital; the 
periods when they had the fullest sway were those 

14 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


of the greatest license and degradation of char- 
acter. 

It is the glory of the Unitarian movement that 
it dared to place the ultimate authority in re- 
ligion within man’s own soul, and not outside; 
and it remained for James Martineau, in his 
monumental work, “The Seat of Authority in 
Religion,” to set forth in unanswerable terms for 
all time the great truth that the real seat of 
authority is not outside, but within man himself; 
not in any institution or book or person or creed, 
but deep in the soul of man lies the only authority 
that religion possesses. 

The religion of the spirit which is today grad- 
ually superseding the older religions of authority 
gives up once and for all the fruitless quest for 
any external authority in religion; first, because 
it cannot be found. The search has been proved 
to be a vain search; no such authority exists any- 
where outside of man’s own being. That it can- 
not be found is a profound blessing; that men 
have professed to have found it outside them- 
selves, has been one of the most fruitful sources 
of mischief in the world, resisting the progress 
of thought, fettering the minds of men, compel- 
ling them often to walk through fire and blood 
to their natural and legitimate possessions. If 

15 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


all men could but see and admit this truth, it 
would mean the emancipation of religion from 
everything that now keeps it from becoming the 
dynamic regenerating power in human life. 

Manifestly it was never intended that we 
should be saved the trouble and effort of personal 
discovery in religion, nor the task of solving our 
own ethical and social problems. Every man of 
us has his own burden to carry and his problems 
to solve. Every age must build up its own the- 
ology and must keep it ever open to revision with 
the coming of new facts. It must also frame its 
own standard of righteousness, which should in 
every age be higher than of any previous age. 
The task is never ended because the world is ever 
growing, man’s range of experience is ever widen- 
ing, and the new facts are constantly multiply- 
ing. 

But the religion of the spirit gives up forever 
the search for an external authority because, in 
a still deeper sense, it knows that if it could be 
found it would prove fatal to the religious and 
moral life of man. The principle involved is uni- 
versal in its application. At every point at which 
a man obeys an external authority, without feel- 
ing an inward response to and ratification of its 
command, the act of obedience is not a moral or 

16 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


spiritual act. To obey any authority without this 
inward response makes man a slave. Such aman 
has surrendered his inalienable right to freedom — 
asaman. And to believe the creed of any church 
simply on the authority of that church, instead of 
because one’s whole inner being, mind and spirit, 
responds confidently and joyously to the truth 
of the creed, is to become a mere puppet in the 
hands of others,—and in the realm, too, of the 
inner life which belongs forever to oneself. The 
great weakness of organized religion today lies 
in the fact that there are so many beliefs that 
are accepted nominally by multitudes, while the 
heart and mind within men have long since re- 
jected them. 

Are we then, in these important matters of 
morals and religion, left wholly to ourselves? Is 
every man to do everything in religious think- 
ing and in the sphere of morals for himself and 
by himself? Is every man to be his own author- 
ity, and can there be therefore as many different 
authorities as there are different individuals? 
Surely not, for that would mean chaos and utter 
confusion in the result, and despair for the in- 
dividual in the process. What is there to prevent 
this, if there is no external authority? 

The fact is that no man is a mere individual; 

17 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


the content of his individuality is partly a social 
content; he is rooted in society and in history. 
He must think for himself, but he cannot think 
at all without the help of many others; he must _ 
find the authority for his life in his own nature, 
but he will find that others share that nature and 
the inner authority speaks to them also. So far 
from the man being his own authority, he comes 
to feel that he is only one interpreter of an au- 
thority which is much greater than any individ- 
ual, and greater than all individuals taken to- 
gether. He finds it even greater than he can 
comprehend. He needs other interpreters to 
help him understand it more fully. This is the 
experience that has led men to believe in “the 
Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
ness.’ And this same experience has brought 
them inevitably into groups and societies and 
churches that they may help one another to know 
that Power better and realize it more fully in 
their lives. 

Those who know most, who have had the broad- 
est experiences and possess the deepest insight, 
naturally come to be the greatest helpers of their 
fellows. And this is what we need most in the 
religious and moral life,—teachers, interpreters, 
helpers, sources of vital inspiration,—not infal- 

18 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


lible guides or final authorities. Instead of look- 
ing to the church for anything of an infallible 
nature, men ought to turn to it naturally for help 
and inspiration and fresh light on life’s problems. 
If the church could only forget all idea of any 
“infallibility,’—a thing that has never existed, 
and put away from itself all ideas of any “au- 
thority,” and simply be willing to become the 
helper and friend of mankind, then the days of its 
true power would begin. The richest personali- 
ties are the greatest helpers. How long would 
any intelligent man be content to listen to one 
in the pulpit who believed that he spoke with an 
infallible authority to men? When religious or 
moral teachers are looked upon as absolute au- 
thorities, they put men in bondage; so long as 
they are willing to remain as helpers and inspirers 
they lead men into the broader places of life and 
truth. When the prophet becomes the oracle, 
men become slaves; so long as he remains the 
prophet he leads the march of God’s free men. 

But still more concretely, just what do we 
mean by the religion of the spirit? We recall the 
old words, “The Lord is the Spirit.” These 
words may be reversed to get their true meaning, 
“The Spirit is the Lord.” We all know that 
there is in our lives a Spirit that works for the 

19 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


high and good, a something that will not let us 
be content with ourselves as we are, or with con- 
ditions in the world as they are, a Spirit that 
forever reaches out and on and beyond to heights 
we descry in vision, a power that struggles within 
us with our lower selves and constantly aspires 
toward a nobler, purer, more unselfish life. And 
we know that there is the same Spirit of power 
working in the same way in all other lives. We 
may call this power the Divine Spirit, who is in 
some mysterious way one with our spirits, and 
yet greater than we ourselves, a power that fills 
all life. 

Spiritual life lies in the interaction of this 
Spirit of Good with our own spirits. This is the 
Spirit we seek to obey, not in any mechanical way 
because the Spirit is vital within us. We may call 
this Spirit within us our “higher self,” or “God,” 
or ‘“‘the Christ,” or ““Buddha,” or ““Abdul Baha,” 
or by any name we choose. 'The name does not 
matter if only we know the reality and respond 
to its eall. For all practical purposes, this Spirit 
of good within us is the Lord of our lives, before 
which we bow in loving reverence. The principal 
reason for shaking off the fetters of any theology, 
regarded as final, is that we may not be hindered 
in our experience of this Divine Spirit within us. 

20 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


Wherever a body of opinion of any kind is in- 
sisted upon, religion as an inward experience is 
not left free to become its rich and abundant 
selicy’ 

It is, unfortunately, in the power of thought- 
forms to cramp and narrow the experiences of 
the soul, and here it is that their greatest mischief 
lies. The function of thinking in religion should 
be not only to formulate the outcome of experi- 
ence, but also to widen the realm of possible ex- 
perience, for we do not get experience without 
ideas, and the larger the ideas, the wider the field 
of possible experience. It is quite true that 
through all popular forms of religion, forms of 
service and forms of thought, the Eternal Reality 
has in some measure reached the souls of men. 
But the range of experience is always narrower 
whenever finality has attached to the form. 

Religious experience is like a perennial spring 
of the water of life. Men have brought their 
theological, ecclesiastical and ritual cups to the 
spring and filled them, and then, unfortunately, 
they have gone away believing that their little 
cups contained all the water there was. ‘To make 
the church an exclusive authority, and the Bible 
the only Word of God; to make any symbols the 
only tokens of the Divine Presence, and Jesus 

21 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


the only Saviour; to point to any body of opinion 
as the only Divine truth, whether this is done in 
Roman Catholicism, in orthodox Protestant or in 
liberal churches is to make it more difficult for 
man to experience God outside these things. 
Thousands of Roman Catholics could never find 
God in a Protestant Church, and thousands of 
Protestants could never find God in a Catholic 
Church. Very few Christians would find Him in 
a Jewish Synagogue and perhaps still fewer Jews 
would recognize Him in a Christian Church. 
The ecclesiastical limit even if it included all the 
churches and synagogues and mosques and 
pagodas throughout the world would still be too 
narrow. ‘The flower of the common garden, the 
cowslips in the meadow, the glorious stars of the 
midnight sky, ought to awaken as genuine re- 
ligious feelings in us as the sight of any altar, or 
the bread and wine of the communion service, or 
any other ecclesiastical symbol. When Lord 
Tennyson said to a friend with whom he was 
walking through the woods, “On your knees, 
man, here are violets,” he was addressing the in- 
ward soul that had escaped the tyrannies of spe- 
cial symbols and was therefore free to find God 
everywhere. 

We find a beautiful suggestion as to the true 

22 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


place for a creed, in science, for science has its 
creed as well as religion, only it discovers it dif- 
_ferently, and it uses it very differently than the 
church uses its theology. For one thing, science 
has reached its infallibility by persistently refus- 
ing to be regarded as infallible; by making mis- 
takes and not being afraid to acknowledge them; 
and by leaving all its conclusions open to every 
species of test. It does not forbid, but earnestly 
welcomes free investigation. And when some 
one comes forward with a new or different view 
from that which has been commonly accepted, 
science does not try him for heresy, but only asks 
for his evidence. And theology will only regain 
_ the ground it has lost, and secure once more the 
world’s intellectual respect, by following in this 
track. It will have to renounce its bogus in- 
fallibility, and gain its new certitudes where alone 
they are to be found. 

But this part of the method of science, impor- 
tant though it be, is not the chief lesson it has to 
teach. ‘That comes when we study the way 
science uses its creed. It is not, we discover, oc- 
cupied in incessantly repeating it. It does not 
sing, chant or recite it. It does not impose it as 
a test on anyone or require a subscription to its 
articles. Yet its creed is ever present at the base 

23 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of all its operations. And it cannot afford to be 
incorrect in it, for the slightest error throws all 
its operations into confusion. 

Observe an engineer as he plans and builds his. 
bridge. His entire working belief is there. His 
theory of statics and dynamics; his convictions 
about currents and wind pressures, about lever- 
ages, about the properties of the arch and of its 
thrust on buttresses; his views on the relation of 
beauty to utility, all are there. He has not sung 
them, or repeated them, or “subscribed”’ to them. 
He has built them into his bridge. His creed is 
embedded and incorporated in his work. And 
men, when they find the work good, proclaim the 
creed to be sound. There is no place or need 
for any “heated controversy” over such a creed. 

Our engineer, it may be observed, has, outside 
of his work, all manner of interesting theories. 
He may have something to say on the ultimate 
properties of matter; he may even doubt, with 
Berkeley, whether matter exists at all apart from 
mind. But the world will take his ideas on these 
speculative questions rather lightly. They are 
at least “pious opinions,” which he may hold or 
not hold, and no one is either the better or worse 
for them. What men insist on is that his beliefs 
on bridge-building and the other things he con- 

24 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


tracts to do shall be sound. In that sphere they 
will tolerate no “heresy.” 

In this way of using its creed, science, we re- 
peat, has at the present time a lesson of supreme 
importance to teach theology. If the church is 
wise today, it will also discover that its beliefs 
are given it, not for incessant subscribing and 
chanting and repeating, but as a plan to work 
by. Its creed should be a program. No article 
of it should be allowed that cannot be expressed 
in the form, not so much of words, as of works 
and institutions. 

When the church has found this way of ex- 
pressing itself it will have no further trouble with 
heretics. When we put our creed into a word, 
straightway our neighbor is instantly ready with 
a counter-word. The ring of our “shibboleths” 
irresistibly invites opposition. But when we put 
our belief into our character, into our deed of 
kindness, into our heroic sacrifice and service to 
humanity, then there is no slightest room for 
argument. And whatever of our creed cannot be 
expressed in these ways, what of it remains as 
mere words, untranslatable into deeds and things, 
may just as well be left out, or at least rele- 
gated to the realm of each individual’s specu- 
lative opinion. 

25 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


When the religion of the spirit shall have fully 
come to this earth, there is little doubt but that 
the church that then exists will organize itself 
along these lines.. The coming creed will be a 
practical program; it will be a statement of the 
laws of the moral and spiritual forces in human 
life, and of their application to the regeneration 
of men and the transformation of society. And 
the business of the church will lie in that applica- 
tion. Its life will be found, not so much in any 
of its verbal affirmations as in the institutions it 
develops and the characters it creates. 

The great prophets and apostles of the race 
have always instinctively gone upon these lines. 
John Wesley accepted the theological concep- 
tions of his time, but his real power lay in a creed 
which was a practical program for service to hu- 
manity. The church began without any creeds, 
and it has no more need of them today than in 
its early stages. ‘The prophet of God will go 
forth now, as then, equipped with a power and 
a program,—and his power will come through his 
program,—and he will find them enough. 

The religion of the spirit, which is struggling 
for fuller, freer expression in all the churches 
today, will issue in a life dedicated to the truth, 
not to mere opinions about the truth; it will find 

26 


THE SPIRIT vs. AUTHORITY 


expression in the spirit of love that dominates 
thoughts, words and deeds; and it will constantly 
seek to translate that love into practical forms of 
service. The life of truth, the life of love, the 
life of service,—is there any higher conception 
of religion than such a life? This religion is ever 
new and never grows old; it can never be out- 
grown; no discoveries of science or formulations 
of philosophy can ever disturb it. There are no 
hampering creeds or ecclesiastical limitations to 
check the growth of man’s life into truth, love 
and service. This is what all the religious aspira- 
tions of the world have aimed at as the one thing 
to be desired, and, at length, realized. And when 
this life is found and lived by men, the world 
will have discovered the only true and universal 
religion, 


27 


Il 


THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 





(setae) which is now dividing the churches 
= 4 of American Protestantism is of 
vital concern to all, regardless of creed, if for no 
other reason, simply because “nothing human can 
be foreign to us,” and the war within the churches 
is one of the great human struggles that char- 
acterize the present age of unrest. Even if our 
sympathies are on the side of modernism, still 
this ought not to prevent us from seeking to un- 
derstand and interpret aright the basis and the 
motives of fundamentalism. The struggle we 
are now witnessing may indeed prove to be one 
of the most significant phenomena of the new 
century,—far more important for the future 
than are the present economic and imperialistic 
wars. It may mean the utter disintegration of 
Protestantism. It may lead to the coming of 
a new and revived Catholicism. If the leaders on 
28 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


both sides firmly stand their ground, if they re- 
fuse to evade the real issue at stake, if they set 
their faces resolutely against any compromise 
of their respective principles, it may mean even- 
tually the death-knell of the theological and sec- 
tarian Christianity we have known in the past, 
and the coming of a new form of religion, more 
rational, more universal, more ethical and more 
social, and therefore more truly adequate to the 
needs of the new day that is dawning on the 
world. 

To claim, as many do both within and without 
the churches, that the whole controversy is, after 
all, scarcely more than a tempest in a tea-pot 
and that it will soon blow over, that the differ- 
ences of opinion are mere surface differences 
and do not touch the deeper foundations of Chris- 
tianity, that the whole trouble is due to hot- 
headed and impetuous individuals on both sides 
who, on second sober thought, will get together 
and harmonize their differences in a perfectly 
friendly way,—this is to betray one’s utter ig- 
norance of the real situation. In the interests 
of truth and real religion the time has come to say 
openly and frankly that the differences between 
fundamentalism and modernism are not mere 
surface differences that can be amiably waved 

29 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


aside or disregarded; they are foundation differ- 
ences, structural differences, amounting in their 
radical dissimilarity almost to the differences 
between two distinct religions. ‘The fact that. 
the modernist and the fundamentalist groups 
both call themselves Christians, both profess to 
derive their theological standards from the his- 
toric traditions of the Christian Church, and 
are both sheltered under the roofs of the same 
established ecclesiastical institutions, should not 
blind anyone to the profound disparity which 
characterizes not only their respective intellectual 
processes, but their objective goals, and even their 
spiritual experiences. Modernism and funda- 
mentalism represent two opposing world-views, 
two antagonistic moral ideals, two radically dif- 
ferent personal attitudes; and it is only a case of 
ostrich-like stupidity blindly to deny and evade 
the searching and serious character of the issue. 
Christianity according to fundamentalism, is one 
religion. Christianity according to modernism, is 
an entirely different religion. Differences can 
be glozed over, compromises can be made, ami- 
able words can be given to the public and pious 
resolutions on Christian unity can be passed, as 
has been done so many times in the history of 
the churches, but all this can never bring into 
30 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


harmony these opposing world-views, these an- 
tagonistic moral ideals, these widely divergent 
attitudes. 

Neither does it change the facts for us to be- 
wail the present situation in the churches as a 
tragic scandal in view of the critical conditions 
that now fill the world. When the world is cry- 
ing out for spiritual vision and moral leadership, 
without which it can never solve its great prob- 
lems, what a pity, we say, that the time and 
energy of the churches should be given over to | 
mere doctrinal controversies that seem to us a 
thousand leagues removed from the actual press- 
ing problems of man’s life today! And, indeed, 
it is a tragic pity. But how can we ever expect 
any real moral leadership or spiritual vision from 
churches that are so hopelessly divided against 
themselves, until they have frankly faced the is- 
sues involved and settled their problems in ac- 
cordance with truth and right? The moral leader- 
ship we have the right to expect from organized 
religion will never appear until some of these 
deeper issues from which the present controversy 
proceeds, and which have for long vexed the in- 
ner life of the churches, threatened their peace 
and weakened their influence, are fought out to 
a finish. 

31 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


It would seem as if the world had had enough 
of wars of all kinds; but if another war must 
come, I want to say frankly that I would rather 
see it take the form of a free, open and above- 
board struggle within the churches between the 
forces of fundamentalism and modernism, a 
struggle in which there is no evasion or com- 
promise of the principles involved, and which 
is carried on, so far as possible with human na- 
ture what it is, without bitterness and personal 
rancor. For such a struggle, if carried to its 
finish, would clear the air of confusion and un- 
- certainty, would emancipate the churches from 
the many chains that bind them to a dead past, 
would set religion free at last to play its right- 
ful part in the unfolding life of humanity, and 
would make possible a moral and _ spiritual 
leadership that we now seek in vain. My per- 
sonal attitude, therefore, as I contemplate and 
seek to interpret the present war within the 
churches is one of hope, not of despair, for out 
of it all I can see the coming of a new and better 
day for religion. 

In one respect, the fundamentalists are pro- 
foundly right. Modernism, if its meaning is 
clearly grasped and consistently accepted, goes 
to the very roots of religious conviction, and in- 

32 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


volves the basic purposes and even the very 
genius of traditional Christianity as it has come 
down through the centuries. The more intelli- 
gent fundamentalist leaders see this more clearly 
than do most of the modernists. This is their 
great fear,—that Christianity as it has been will 
be superseded by something new and different, 
and thus religious continuity with the past will 
be broken. And their fears are not groundless, 
for modernism is much more revolutionary than 
our present-day modernists. ‘The modernist has 
not yet been fully transformed by his own 
modernism. 

But in another respect, the modernists are just 
as profoundly right. A house divided against 
itself cannot stand. Christianity can hardly last 
much longer half fundamentalist and half mod- 
ernist. It is not merely the aggressiveness of 
fundamentalism that is forcing a choice; it is 
the inherent nature of the issue itself. A Chris- 
tianity that is content to clothe itself in terms 
of an outgrown science and an obsolete theology 
is hopelessly doomed in this modern age. And 
this is what the modernists see much more clearly 
than do the fundamentalists. All other ques- 
tions involved are trivial as compared with these 

33 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


fundamental convictions of both parties to the 
struggle. 

It is not my purpose to enter the field of the 
present controversy. What is needed just now is. 
more light and less heat,—more careful and exact 
exposition and less of the bitterness of contro- 
versy. Who is to blame, or what are the causes 
that lie back of the present situation in the 
churches? 

We shall not begin to grasp the gravity of the 
situation or be in a position rightly to interpret 
the war within the churches unless we come to 
see that it is only the culmination of forces that 
have long been at work in the life of organized 
religion. It is not a new or recent thing. Mr. 
Bryan, Bishop Manning, Dr. Straton and the — 
other fundamentalist leaders are no more respon- 
sible for these wide differences that now divide 
the churches than are Dr. Grant, Dr. Fosdick, 
Dr. Parks and the other leaders of the modern- 
ists. They are all of them but mouth-pieces of 
ideas and principles that have had their place, 
either openly or implicitly, in the various churches 
for many centuries. The limits of space forbid 
our tracing the development of Christianity from 
the beginning, but we must go back as far as 
the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth cen- 

34 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


tury if we are to understand the sorry plight of 
present-day Protestantism. 

The popular view of the Reformation held 
and taught in every Protestant church is very 
different from the view held by the scientific 
historian. According to the popular view the 
Reformation marked a great stride forward in 
religion. It was the modernist or radical re- 
ligious movement of that day. In breaking with 
the Roman Catholic Church it set itself free 
from the “infallible authority” of the old insti- 
tution, and made possible the frank and full de- 
velopment of the religious principle. Martin 
Luther stood forth in the sixteenth century as the 
prophet of a new freedom for the individual, a. 
new interpretation of religious truths in harmony 
with the new light with which the Renaissance 
was flooding the world, a new and untrammeled 
development for religious institutions. Since the 
Reformation the only Christianity worthy of con- 
sideration has been that of Protestantism, as it 
alone has had the truth, the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth for the world. These were 
the ideas that I was taught and that I imbibed 
from Protestant books and sermons, along with 
all others in Protestant churches. 

According to the scientific historian of today, 

35 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


the facts of the Reformation were very different. 
As subsequent events have proved, instead of 
being a distinct stride forward, the Reforma- 
tion turned out to be a decided step backward 
in religious development. The Reformation 
leaders were the real fundamentalists and the 
Roman Catholic leaders were the modernists of 
that time. In breaking with the Roman Catholic 
Church the Protestants did not free themselves 
from the idea of an “infallible” external authority 
in religion; they simply transferred the “infal- 
lible” authority from the institution to the Bible. 
In reconstructing the truths of religion they were 
utterly uninfluenced by the new light of the Re- 
naissance period. ‘Their thought remained theo- 
centric; it revolved around God and was entirely 
untouched by the new humanism that, a little 
later, realized that all things, even religion, were 
for the sake of man. They substituted for rea- 
son in religion, faith, inspiration, the inner light, 
subjective experience, and thus threw the door 
wide open for an indefinite multiplication of 
sects, for all kinds of vagaries, and for limitless 
absurdities. Martin Luther, great man that he 
was, knew nothing about freedom in religion as 
we understand that term, and succeeded in bind- 
ing Protestantism to a mental slavery to the let- 
36 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


ter of the Bible from which present-day modern- 
ists are frantically seeking to escape. 

There were two great contributions, however, 
that the Reformation did make to religion whose 
importance cannot be over-estimated, though 
their full implications were not to be realized for 
several centuries: (1) the idea of the right of 
private judgment, and (2) the notion that some 
things in religion are more important than others. 
These seeds were planted in the sixteenth century 
and they contained tremendous revolutionary 
possibilities for the future; but the seeds did not 
begin to germinate until two centuries later; and 
what we are witnessing in the churches today is 
simply the coming to flower,—the full expres- 
sion of the implications of those seed-ideas which, 
for the most part, have lain dormant for so long. 
The Deists in England and France, and a little 
later the Unitarians in England and then in 
America, were the first groups to translate the 
new spirit of humanism and the new knowledge 
of science into religious terms. But for a hun- 
dred years they constituted a pitiful minority, 
and the modernists of today are but just begin- 
ning, in any thorough-going way, to give ex- 
pression to the spirit of free inquiry in religion, 
for which the two germinant ideas of the Refor- 

37 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


mation paved the way. In other words, the 
Reformation, in these two revolutionary ideas, 
sowed the seed for the critical spirit of free in- 
-quiry whose growth in our own day has begun 
to prove a serious menace to the integrity of 
organized Protestantism. 

As Professor Brewster points out, the simple 
fact is that the Protestant Reformation came al- 
most two hundred years too soon to accomplish 
the reforms that we now see were needed in re- 
_ligion. It belongs, therefore, to the late Mid- 
dle Ages, instead of to the early modern period, 
and so is on the wrong side of the great gulf 
that separates the darkness from the light. It 
was absolutely untouched by the new ideas and 
scientific conceptions of the universe and of life 
that a little later were to flood the world. The 
practical result was, that while the Reforma- 
tion did clean up a few obvious abuses into which 
the Roman Catholic Church had fallen, it left 
the entire sub-structure of mediaeval thinking 
untouched, and when the creeds of Protestant- 
ism came to be formulated they gave expression 
to the truths of religion on the basis of, and 
literally in the terms of, the old pre-scientific and 
mediaeval thought. Luther threw his inkstand 
at the Devil, and the Calvinists required their 

38 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


pastors to confess the finger of God in every 
word of the Bible. 

“It is no disparagement of the greatness of 
Martin Luther to say that he came upon the 
scene too soon to accomplish a genuine and thor- 
ough-going reformation of religion. He was 
not to blame for that. If his famous theses 
could have been nailed on the doors of Witten- 
berg Cathedral at about the time, let us say, that 
Halley was figuring the orbit of his equally fa- 
mous comet, the situation in the religious world 
might be very different today. The dogmatic 
mind was then, for the moment, loosened up. 
The critical spirit of science and the new hu- 
manistic spirit were abroad in the life of the 
eighteenth century. The theological world might 
then have really assimilated the new science and 
the new philosophy and given us some sort of 
consistent world-view that should include every- 
thing. At the very least, something of the new 
learning might have so penetrated into the old 
theology—that Protestant thought would have 
looked forward instead of backward. 

“But as it was, the church and the new world 
failed to synchronize. Protestant thought crys- 
tallized into its creeds and doctrines nearly 
two hundred years too soon, with the inevitable 

. 39 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


result that it did not change, but only perpetu- 
ated, the old theology of the Middle Ages. The 
Protestant Reformation proved only a false 
dawn, and the one great fact that the present. 
war within the churches reveals is that the whole 
reforming job has to be done over again from 
the bottom. ‘The only question is whether the 
second reformation, unpleasant as it will un- 
doubtedly be, shall be gone through with now, 
or again postponed to “a more convenient sea- 
son,’ when, indeed, it may be too late.” 
Another tragic weakness in the Reformation 
that is clearly apparent today lies in the fact that 
its principles and ruling ideas led to a divorce 
between religion on the one hand, and science, 
art and social effort on the other. ‘This was 
bound to result increasingly in a separation of 
religion from the whole, all-around life of men, 
with the result that Protestantism has become 
thin and superficial and out of vital touch with 
man’s deepest thought, his sense of apprecia- 
tion of the beautiful, and his social aspirations 
and strivings. At the close of the Middle Ages 
the Catholic Church had appropriated and made 
its own the Aristotelian science which was the 
only science of that time. It knew no conflict 
between “science and religion’’; it did not seek 
40 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


to belittle or set aside the function of reason 
in religion. It accepted reason fully and gladly, 
and through reason it worked out its great sys- 
tems of scholasticism, notably that of Thomas 
Aquinas, in which Roman Catholic theology was 
frankly based on the Aristotelian science. Mar- 
tin Luther, on the other hand, derided reason; 
he called it “that little hag,’ and he referred 
contemptuously to the mind as “that old strum- 
pet.” Not reason but faith, and a blind faith at 
that,—the blinder it was, the better for religion, 
—was to be henceforth the guiding principle in 
religion; and the Dr. Stratons of present-day 
Protestantism are the logical descendants of 
Martin Luther in their hostility to reason. 

In the same way, the Catholic Church accepted 
art in its many different forms and employed it 
in enriching and ennobling the life of religion. 
It eagerly sought out the great artist, it subsi- 
dized him and set him to work in architecture, 
in painting, in sculpture. It gave to the world 
the noble cathedrals of Europe, the beautiful 
paintings and the magnificent statues, which we 
journey afar to see and admire. If the Church’s 
patronage of art and the artist limited the range 
of art during the Middle Ages, it nevertheless 
resulted in a vast enrichment of religion, both 

41 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


in its thought and practise. Protestantism, how- 
ever, from the beginning, has spurned art even 
as it has derided reason. If reason was of the 
Devil, art belonged only to this Devil’s world, 
and the heart of the true believer must be set on 
the beauties and joys of “the other world be- 
yond this vale of tears.” Protestantism as a 
whole has been ascetic as the Catholic Church 
never was. Under Puritanism in England, re- 
ligion was denuded of the beautiful in every form. 
Churches were ugly, statues and paintings were 
a sacrilege, music was a sin, the services were 
barren and cold, preaching was formal and 
austere. Only recently have the Protestant 
churches dared to employ some of the beautiful 
things of life from which Protestantism had di- 
vorced religion. 

The Catholic Church also believed firmly in the 
organic conception of religion, rather than in the 
individualistic. ‘The Church was the Kingdom 
of God on earth; it was gradually to spread un- 
til it embraced all mankind. It held that the 
spiritual was above all civil authority, that God 
was the real ruler of this world, and that, there- 
fore, religion was vitally concerned with all that 
had to do with the life of men. This viewpoint 
leads up to our modern conception of social 

42 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


religion far more truly than does the general 
' official teaching of Protestantism, which has 
never tried to grasp, until quite recently, the 
organic conception of religion. The whole trend 
of Protestant Christianity may be said to rest 
upon the idea that the world is not only too 
much with us, but also too much for us. The 
promise of a day of judgment when “the last 
shall be first” is the open confession that the 
business of religion is not to save the world,— 
for that is hopeless,—but only to save as many 
individuals as possible, and see them safely 
through this wicked world to some distant heaven 
of bliss, while the world itself goes down to utter 
destruction. The difficulty that every preacher 
of social religion has in keeping his pulpit in 
even the more liberal churches only proves how 
out of harmony social religion is with the funda- 
mental principles of Protestantism. The “Kind 
of the World’”’ sermons, and the doctrine of the 
Second Coming of Christ, which play so large 
a part in the preaching of the fundamentalists, 
only prove that they have never grasped the idea 
that religion is to save and transform this world 
here and now. 

With this divorce of religion from reason and 
science, from art, and from any intelligent social 
. | 43 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


striving, is it any wonder that Protestantism as 
a whole has gradually lost its hold upon the in- 
tellectual classes on the one hand, and the work- 
ing classes on the other? Is it strange that religion — 
as taught in so many of the churches seems like 
a little back-water, far away from the main 
stream of life? Should we be surprised that to 
an increasing number of people religion seems to 
deal only with the outer fringe of life, and not 
with its central needs and problems? Or, should 
we wonder that a religion presented in terms of 
a pre-scientific and obsolete theology should offer 
no appeal whatever to the young men and women 
of the new generation who have been educated 
to the modern world-view, who have caught more 
or less of the scientific spirit, and whose sym- 
pathies go out more or less intelligently to the 
great social movements of this modern age? It 
is such conditions that have forced the present 
issue upon the churches,—an issue that it would 
be criminal to postpone any longer. 

If these considerations throw any light upon 
the underlying causes of the war within the 
churches, let us now proceed to summarize the 
weaknesses of both fundamentalists and modern- 
ists, weaknesses that have led to the precipita- 
tion of the conflict in its present form. 

44 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


The fundamentalist rejects reason in religion 
and substitutes for it what he calls “faith.” But 
he does not use the word, “faith,” as expressing 
the sum total of a man’s final attitude toward 
the universe and life. By “faith” he means a 
blind acceptance of the literal authority of state- 
ments made in a certain book,—the Bible,—and 
the equally blind and unreasoning acceptance 
of particular interpretations of these statements 
found in doctrines formulated by the Councils 
of the Church. This attitude means the closing 
of the door on the spirit of free inquiry, the 
negation of any critical investigation, the obsti- 
nate refusal to accept the conclusions of modern 
science as they apply directly to theology, and 
the utter abandonment of the search for truth 
in the sphere of religion. In an age that glori- 
fies science, that is characterized through and — 
through by the spirit of free inquiry, that is bent 
on the fullest possible investigation of everything 
traditional, even those things regarded as most 
“sacred,” that is compelled to the search for 
truth as the only source of the solution of the 
complex problems that confront mankind,—in 
such an age, is there any possible hope for a 
religion that rejects reason, that refuses the new 
learning, that turns its back deliberately on 

45 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


everything that most deeply and most nobly 
characterizes this modern age? 'To ask this ques- 
tion is to answer it for all intelligent men and 
women. If fundamentalism is to persist in re- 
ligion, the churches will be left to the ignorant, 
the untrained, and the superstitious, and the 
main stream of life will flow on without them. 
Growing out of this attitude lies another grave 
weakness of fundamentalism. It is static rather 
than dynamic. It rejects any possibility of 
progress either in knowledge or in morals. It 
would hold the world to the present status quo. 
In an age when everything is in flux,—when po- 
litical governments are weakening, and social in- 
stitutions are crumbling, and moral ideals are 
changing, and educational systems are being 
radically modified, and the whole of our in- 
dustrial civilization is being gradually trans- 
formed, the fundamentalist would keep the 
church intact just as it has been in form 
and teaching. In a constantly changing world 
it would hold religion rigidly static and un- 
changed. ‘The present conflict in the churches 
only proves how utterly futile all such attempts 
must be in a world like ours. If there is to be 
growth, there must be change. If progress is to 
be made there must constantly be the passing 
46 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


away of the old, and the coming of new knowl- 
edge. Life, just because it is life, consists of 
continual readjustments, as conditions change 
and new light comes. To remain static, to re- 
fuse to make the new readjustments, is to cease 
to live. All static things are dead things; they 
only cumber the ground and should be put out 
of sight as speedily as possible. When intelli- 
gent men see clearly that the only hope of the 
future lies in the full and free assimilation of the 
new knowledge in religion as well as everywhere 
else, and in the achieving of a new and nobler 
morality than the past has ever known, what 
place or influence can a static church have in the 
future? 

When fundamentalism confesses that the 
world is too much for us, and all that is left us is 
to save our own little souls and get them out 
of this Devil’s world as quickly as possible, it 
espouses a narrow and selfish individualism that 
is utterly foreign to the social spirit that is at 
last awake in the world. The “other-worldli- 
ness’ of fundamentalists is even farther away 
from this modern age than the golden streets and 
jasper walls of their distant heaven. If religion 
cannot bring to bear upon the problems of dis- 
ease, of poverty, of war, of injustice and wrong 

A 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of every kind, a practical moral idealism that it 
also knows how to apply intelligently to the world 
that is, if it cannot bring a quickening spirit of 
lofty enthusiasm and confident hope to the cyn- 
icism and pessimism of today, if it cannot lead 
the way to the establishment,—perhaps far off,— 
of God’s kingdom here upon earth, then religion 
has no reason for existence. And more than 
that, if anything stands out more clearly than all 
else it is that we shall never save our own souls, 
here or hereafter, except in just the degree that 
we lose ourselves in helping to build that better 
world for men. 

There is one other thing in fundamentalism 
that seems to be a defect of temperament more 
than anything else, and that makes it seem hope- 
less to look for any speedy ending of the con- 
flict. The fundamentalist seems to be lacking 
in a sense of imagination. There is little or no 
poetry in his soul, or, at least, he finds no poetry 
in his religion; it is all dogma, and prose dogma 
at that. If he could only read his Bible and see 
these stories as they really are,—beautiful poetry, 
—instead of missing the poetry utterly and mak- 
ing of it all only hard literal prose, how dif- 
ferent his view of religion might be! 

But if these weaknesses of the fundamentalist 

48 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


position have made inevitable the present out- 
break of the conflict, the modernists are equally 
responsible for the present situation. In his in- 
troduction to “Painted Windows,” Kirsopp Lake 
calls attention to the fact that the modernists 
or liberals in the church fall into two distinct 
groups. ‘There is a left wing, which speaks 
frankly, with clearness and decision. Once con- 
vinced that a doctrine or belief is obsolete or 
false, the members of this left wing discard it. 
They do not attempt to cloak their non-con- 
formity behind the futile effort to “re-state’’ or 
revamp the old doctrine. They frankly let it 
go and leave it out of their preaching. The mem- 
bers of this left wing, because of their outspoken 
honesty, sometimes lose their pulpits by expul- 
sion by “the powers higher up,” as in the case 
of Dr. Crapsey of Rochester. More often they 
are crowded out by the sentiment raised against 
them; occasionally, because of peculiarly favor- 
able circumstances, such as an unusually intelli- 
gent or influential congregation, or a strong per- 
sonal following, they are able to retain their 
pulpits, at least for a considerable time. 

And, then, there are the right wing modern- 
ists, whom Kirsopp Lake describes as follows: 
“There is probably little difference in the mat- 

49 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ter of private belief between them and the left 
wing, but they are more concerned with safe- 
guarding the unity of the church. They en- 
deavor to do this by using the old phraseology © 
with a new meaning, so that, for instance, mem- 
bers of this party feel justified in stating pub- 
licly that they accept the old creed, though they 
admit that they do not believe in it in the sense 
which was originally intended. This is techni- 
cally called ‘reinterpreting,’ and by a sufficient 
amount of adroit ‘reinterpreting’ all the articles 
of the creed can be given whatever meaning is 
desired. . . . Performed with skill, this dialecti- 
cal legerdemain is very soothing to a not unduly 
intelligent congregation and prevents any breach 
in the continuity of the Church’s belief.”’ 

These words of Professor Lake give us a 
fairly accurate picture of the right wing mod- 
ernists, who considerably outnumber the left wing 
in the churches, and whose attitude, however 
they may seek to justify it to themselves, is far 
more responsible in the minds of the intelligent 
public for the Churches’ loss of intellectual in- 
tegrity and moral honesty than are all the absurd 
and unscientific statements of men like Dr. 
Straton. I would not question the personal sin- 
cerity of any man, and I know full well the subtle 

50 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


arguments that this right wing modernist em- 
ploys to justify him in remaining in a church 
in whose creed and ritual he no longer believes, 
however he may “accept them in principle.” 
Whatever he may label this mental attitude or 
however satisfying to himself his motives, the 
fact is clear today that an increasing number of 
intelligent men and women are calling it, in their 
thoughts if not in words, by that ugly name, 
“hypocrisy.” ‘This policy has involved for the 
right wing modernist, almost unconsciously, an 
evasion of vital issues rather than a frank facing 
of them, a covering up of distinctions with 
specious phraseology, a glozing over of contra- 
dictions, a lulling to sleep of the minds that 
have begun to question and doubt. 

During the last generation the religious read- 
ing public has been flooded with books, sermons, 
magazine articles of all kinds, by modernists of 
this type, all devoted to the “reconciling process.”’ 
To many laymen and laywomen in the churches 
whose mental training and equipment did not 
permit them to formulate a new philosophy for 
themselves more in accordance with the new 
knowledge pressing in on every side, this method 
of dealing with the problems served for a time 
to quiet doubts and conciliate minds that were 

51 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


growing restless. But the tragedy of the situ- 
ation is revealed today in the fact that this policy 
of temporizing, evading and glozing over the real 
questions involved has left the bulk of the mem-_ 
bership of all the churches uneducated and ut- 
terly unfit and unprepared to face intelligently 
the controversy that has arisen. 

It is not in the spirit of condemnation but 
rather of deepest pity that we point out these 
facts. The minister himself, trained to the mod- 
ern viewpoint in college or university, at the 
beginning equipped with the materials for a thor- 
oughly modern faith but shrinking from the haz- 
ard and labor of frankly speaking it, now in this 
critical hour finds his leadership hedged about 
with inhibitions of various kinds which he can- 
not break through, and in this crucial hour to 
which all the churches have now come, he finds 
in his care a congregation utterly without un- 
derstanding, which would be equally responsive 
to the appeal of reactionism and fundamental- 
ism, on one side, or modernism on the other. 
If all modernists had been of the left wing va- 
riety, the present situation might not have arisen 
in the form it has taken, or if it had come, the 
‘rank and file of the membership of the churches 
would have been able to face it with intelligence 

52 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


and decision. As it is, multitudes are in utter 
- confusion of mind as to which side of the con- 
troversy they ought to take. The veil has now 
fallen from this whole specious method of deal- 
ing with truth in religion. What we are now 
witnessing is only the inevitable penalty that 
must sooner or later be paid as the price for 
holding one set of beliefs privately, as esoteric, 
and teaching, either openly or by implication, an 
entirely different set of views. 

Eventually, the truth will out, in religion as 
well as everywhere else. The war within the 
churches today means at bottom that the time of 
_ neutrality is past. Evasion, sophistry, specious 
arguments, “reinterpretations,’ conciliations, 
that have succeeded thus far in postponing the 
real issues, will no longer suffice. Two different 
worlds have crashed, the world of tradition and 
the world of modernism. One is scholastic, 
static, authoritarian, individualistic; the other is 
vital, dynamic, free, social. There is a clash here 
as profound and grim as that between Chris- 
tianity and paganism. Amiable words and pious 
resolutions can no longer hide the differences. 
The churches can sing until doomsday, “Blest 
be the tie that binds,” but it can never bind 
these two different worlds together. We might 

. 53 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


as well face the facts. The God of the funda- 
mentalist is one God; the God of the modernist 
is quite another. ‘The supernatural, dogmatic 
Christ of the fundamentalist is one Christ. The 
historic Jesus of Nazareth of the modernist, with 
his great message and his spirit of love, is quite 
another. The infallible Bible of fundamental- 
ism is one Bible; the Bible of the modernist, that 
has given to the world the great literature of a 
unique people, is quite another. The ideas of 
the church, of the kingdom of God, of salva- 
tion, of the consummation of all things,—these 
are one thing to fundamentalists, and entirely 
different things to modernists. Christianity can- 
not endure half fundamentalist and half mod- 
ernist. It must become either all one thing or 
all the other. 

Glenn Frank in a recent editorial in The Cen- 
tury states the case clearly, when he says: ““Mod- 
ernism in religion has not been, up to date, a 
particularly effective movement. Of necessity it 
has had to pass through its negative phase. We 
must wage war against the false gods before we 
can release and make clear the new gods. And 
war, even in a good cause, is always a spiritually 
destructive thing. We must pay the price of a 
period of idol-breaking before we can realize 

54 


THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY 


the community of free spirits. But the liberal 
churches together with the new knowledge of 
science have done a pretty thorough job of icon- 
oclasm. ‘The old idols of pagan theology that 
have been binding the churches to a dead past 
have been pretty thoroughly pounded until they 
are cracked and tottering. If the modernists of 
both wings will now dare to come out into the 
open, if they will stand together without fear or 
equivocation, if they will cease to be mere critics 
and will have the courage and intelligence to 
become crusaders of a new and positive religious 
faith, if they will take the raw materials of a 
genuine religious liberalism that are today lying 
all about us in confusion, and challenge and blend 
them together in a constructive religious philoso- 
phy, touched into life by enthusiastic and ag- 
gressive leadership, they can usher in a new and 
glorious day for religion. It will be far from 
smooth sailing for the new reformation. It may, 
for a time, have to cry its message from street 
corners or from secular platforms, but if so, it 
will not be the first time that real religion has 
been driven from the churches and synagogues.” 

What this age hungers for is a positive faith 
that will, as Kirsopp Lake puts it, “satisfy the 
_ soul of the saint, without disgusting the intellect 
55 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of the scholar.”’ I am neither a saint nor a scholar, 
but that is the kind of a faith I am looking for; 
that is the faith we are all seeking, just because 
we belong to this modern age, with all its con- 
fusion of thought and all its uncertainty in be- 
lief. It is a new synthesis of religion with sci- 
ence and art that is so sadly needed today, a 
synthesis of free research, imagination and faith 
which the modern world is so blindly seeking. ‘To 
achieve this new synthesis, now that the hour 
has struck in the struggle within the churches, 
is the solemn and glorious task imposed upon 
all modernists, whether within or without the 
churches, for upon what we do now depends the 
religion of the future. 


56 


ITI 


THE DOCTRINES IN DISPUTE: WHERE IS THE 
TRUTH ? 


Fe MID the many questions of difference 
Whi between fundamentalists and mod- 
| ernists, both ecclesiastical and theolog- 
= ical, [ imagine the average man and 
woman is preéminently interested in finding out 
where the truth really lies. Is it possible, amid 
all the smoke and din of controversy, to separate 
the essential from the unessential, the permanent 
from the transitory, the truth from the error, 
and thus to obtain a clear understanding of the 
real issues involved? In attempting this delicate 
task I would avoid everything savoring of dog- 
matism. The writer was born and reared in the 
atmosphere of orthodoxy, but from the time he 
entered college he ceased to believe in the old 
doctrines as interpreted by the fundamentalists. 
In attempting to answer the question, Where 
does the truth lie? I am therefore, simply bring- 
ing you those conceptions of the truth to which 
57 





IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


my own experience has led me through these 
years,—the result of my study and reading, my 
observation and reflection and thought. I am 
speaking, therefore, for myself, and in no sense 
for others. We are all seekers after the truth, 
but we do not always see things eye to eye; and 
this should not be necessary if we accept the 
principle that accords to every individual full and 
complete liberty of thought on all questions of 
belief. 

There are four of the old doctrines that seem 
to be chiefly involved in the present controversy 
within the churches: (1) The Infallibility of the 
Bible, (2) The Virgin Birth of Jesus, (3) The 
Physical Resurrection of Jesus, and (4) The 
Second Coming of Christ. For some reason ~ 
we have heard very little of the Doctrine of the 
Atonement, although a generation ago a fierce 
controversy was waged around this particular 
belief of the churches, and, of course, the funda- 
mentalists hold as tenaciously to the old doctrine 
of Vicarious Sacrifice as they do to these other 
doctrines about which there has been most dis- 
cussion. 

Before beginning our search for the truth in 
these old doctrines, however, I want to emphasize 
two general principles which may help to clarify 

58 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


our minds as we approach the specific problems. 
And the first principle is this. The truth of re- 
ligion does not lie on either side in this con- 
troversy. ‘These four doctrines that are being so 
hotly debated today are theological, not religious 
questions. As such, they do not touch the heart 
of religion. ‘Theology belongs to the intellect- 
ual realm, religion to the realm of the spirit. 
As Dr. Parkhurst pointed out so clearly in a 
recent public address, religion is an experience, 
theology is man’s rationalization about that 
experience. ‘The experience persists; our ration- 
alizations, or theologies, are constantly chang- 
ing. The form our theologies take grows, or 
should grow, naturally out of the degree of men- 
tal, moral and spiritual development that we have 
attained, out of the actual knowledge we pos- 
sess of the universe, of life, of ourselves and of 
our fellows. There are multitudes of people who 
know the experience and who live daily the re- 
ligious life, but who are utterly ignorant of all 
theology and who could not define a single doc- 
trine of the creeds. On the other hand, there 
are multitudes who are letter-perfect in their 
knowledge of the creeds but who know hietle or 
nothing about real religion. 

For those who like to reflect upon such ques- 
. 59 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION : 


tions, or whose mental habits run in the direction 
of rationalization, some sort of a theology is in- 
evitable; but for many others of a different men- 
tal make-up, theology plays no essential part. 
whatever in their religious lives. If discussing, 
debating and arguing theological questions ap- 
peals to you as interesting or worth-while, then 
that is the sort of thing you like; but the thing 
to keep constantly in mind is that intellectual 
ideas or beliefs about religion in no sense con- 
stitute religion, neither do they necessarily lead 
to religion. In fact, the present ‘controversy 
with its criminations and recriminations, its bit- 
terness and lack of sympathetic understanding 
on both sides, proves only too clearly that theol- 
ogy as such, whatever its brand may be, is apt 
to lead away from the true religious spirit, and 
become the utter negation of the religious ideals. 

As these four doctrines are being debated to- 
day within the churches they are purely theolog- 
ical questions; their religious value or meaning 
is scarcely being considered, and, to the great 
majority, is completely lost sight of. This is 
only another way of saying that they are being 
debated, pro and con, merely as questions of 
fact. As such, science has rendered a verdict 
that is opposed to the verdict of the old theology. 

60 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


The fundamentalists accept the facts declared in 
the old theology, while the modernists accept the 
facts as revealed by science. The difference of 
opinion between fundamentalists and modernists 
as to the facts, therefore, is simply the difference 
between science and tradition. Let me illus- 
trate my meaning more clearly. 

The question of the infallibility of the Bible, as 
it is being discussed, is a question of fact. The 
Bible is either infallible, that is, without error 
of any kind, or it is not. According to the sci- 
ence of historical and literary criticism, both 
internal and external evidences make it utterly 
impossible for the intelligent man to accept the 
Bible as an inerrant Book, and therefore as in- 
fallible. The Bible nowhere claims infallibility 
for itself, and the idea of infallibility as applied 
to the Bible is a late addition to theology, hav- 
ing its origin at the time of the Reformation when 
the Protestants threw off the yoke of an infallible 
church. The limits of space forbid the mention- 
ing of specific cases of error to be found in the 
Bible, but the books that contain the conclusions 
of historical and literary criticism, by the fore- 
most Biblical scholars, are easily available to all. 
According to these conclusions, the Bible con- 
tains historical, scientific and chronological er- 
; 61 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


rors and inaccuracies that are incompatible with 
the idea of infallibility, and even the moral ideals 
of the later portions of the Bible contradict and 
go way beyond those of the earlier portions. . 
This is perfectly natural and inevitable, when 
we remember that the books of the Bible are 
the product of more than twelve hundred years 
of the life and experience of the Hebrew people, 
and were written by many different people and 
under very different conditions. The fundamen- 
talists simply reject all these scientific facts in 
toto, and continue to declare the infallibility of 
the Bible in spite of the facts, which anyone can 
ascertain for himself. 

In the same way, Biblical scholarship has made 
clear that there is no historical basis for the 
Virgin Birth stories. Literary criticism has 
shown from the internal evidences of the Gospel 
narratives themselves that the Birth stories as 
recorded in Matthew and Luke are in no sense 
integral parts of the narratives, that in both 
Gospels they stand in actual contradiction to the 
genealogical chapters that precede them, that the 
Birth stories in Matthew cannot be made to 
harmonize with those in Luke, that they are later 
additions to the original Gospel narrative, and 
that their literary style stamps them clearly as 

62 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


being purely poetic conceptions. Besides, we 
know that the natural and common way for the 
ancient and pre-scientific mind to account for 
any unusually great and noble character was to 
affirm of him a virgin birth. This was the case 
with Buddha, with Plato, with Cesar Augustus 
and others. Biology and the modern scientific 
conception of the reign of natural law also make 
it extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, 
for the modern mind to believe that any being, 
however great, has ever come into this world 
except through the natural and biological process 
of generation and birth. As the Virgin Birth 
is being discussed in the churches today, it is 
simply a question of fact. From the viewpoint 
of science,—biological, historical and literary,— 
the facts are all against the historicity of the 
Birth stories. The modernist is inclined to accept 
the facts of science, though occasionally he ap- 
pears to be uncertain; the fundamentalist, on 
the other hand, still clings to his blind faith in 
the literalness of the stories, in spite of all the 
facts disclosed. 

The physical resurrection of Jesus is also be- 
ing debated as a question of fact. Historical 
and literary criticism make clear that the vari- 
ous stories of the resurrection conflict with one 

63 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


another, that they contain discrepancies that can 
hardly be harmonized by the disinterested mind, 
that Paul, the earliest writer on the subject, 
categorically denied any physical resurrection, — 
and in his well-known fifteenth chapter of Ist 
Corinthians, frankly disclaims any belief in the 
resurrection of Jesus’s physical body, though he 
believes profoundly in his spiritual resurrection. 
From the biological view-point, dead bodies re- 
main dead; they do not come to life again after 
being in the tomb for three days, whatever may 
become of the spirit. Science recognizes the fact 
of resuscitation, but that is a very different thing. 
In the one case a body, never really dead, is 
revived; in the other case, a dead body is lit- 
erally brought back to life; this last is what 
the physical resurrection of Jesus means to the 
fundamentalist; and this, with its idea of the 
universality of law, science knows nothing about. 
According to these stories which the fundamen- 
talist accepts literally, after spending forty days 
upon the earth, the physical Jesus ascends into 
heaven and the watchers see his physical body 
disappear in the air over their heads. ‘There are 
a number of serious difficulties in the literal ac- 
ceptance of the ascension. We should be obliged 
to believe that the law of gravitation was set 
} 64 | 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


aside in order to allow a body, heavier than air, 
to rise toward the skies. Jesus’s body would 
have had to penetrate through the fifty miles of 
the earth’s atmosphere before it would reach the 
open stretches of space. He would then have 
been some twenty odd millions of miles from the 
nearest planet. How far would he have had 
to rise before entering “heaven”? According 
to the beliefs of that day, the earth was sta- 
tionary, heaven was just a few miles over-head, 
and hell was underneath. But with our knowl- 
edge that the earth is revolving at a terrific rate 
of speed, if “heaven” is a localized place in space, 
it will sometimes be above, sometimes below, de- 
pending upon the position of the earth at any 
particular moment. So that if one could ascend 
into heaven by arising above the earth, the as- 
cension would have to be very carefully timed. 
I raise these questions seriously, simply because 
there are so many people who think they believe 
in these literal stories who have never stopped 
to ask what is really involved in them. 

The doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ 
is based on a few isolated and rather obscure pas- 
sages in which the language is highly figurative 
and which lends itself naturally to various kinds 
of meaning. Both pre-millennialists and post- 

65 


TRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


millennialists base their opposing interpretations 
on the same passages. According to these pas- 
sages, in that great day, the heavens will be. 
rolled back like a scroll, and Jesus will appear 
seated on the clouds, surrounded by cohorts of 
angels, whence he will proceed to judge the 
earth; the wicked will be destroyed and the saints 
will reign with him forever and ever. Literary 
criticism reveals the fact that all such passages 
belong to what is called “apocalyptic literature” ; 
it is all symbolical and was never intended to be 
interpreted literally, as the fundamentalists ac- 
cept it. While the doctrine refers to a future 
event yet to take place, science has nothing di- 
rectly to say about this doctrine as science does 
not deal in “futures” of any kind. But it is 
obvious that the whole spirit of science, with its 
ruling conceptions of the universe and the reign 
of law, is entirely opposed to the possibility of 
any such catastrophic event. 

Now, what I want to make clear is, that in 
all I have said on these four doctrines, around 
which the controversy is now raging, I have been 
dealing with them simply as questions of fact, 
as this is the view-point from which they are 
now being discussed. On the one hand, there are 
the traditional facts which underlie the old doc- 

66 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


trines and which the fundamentalist holds most 
strenuously and for which he is contending most 
vigorously. On the other hand, there are the 
facts of science which no modern man can ig- 
nore, and which have been making it increasingly 
difficult for intelligent minds to longer accept 
the traditional doctrines. From the view-point 
of science, there can be no longer any shadow of 
doubt, these old traditional doctrines as they have 
come down to us from the past and as they have 
been generally interpreted in the past are not 
factually true. If one accepts the findings of 
science he cannot, honestly or consistently, ac- 
cept the “facts” of these old doctrines in the sense 
that the fundamentalist accepts them. If he 
accepts the fundamentalist’s view of these doc- 
trines, then he must deliberately, or ignorantly, 
shut his eyes to the clear facts that science has 
revealed. Whether one accepts the scientific 
or the traditional view depends upon the indi- 
vidual and his general mental outlook. 

But having said this, I want to repeat again 
for the sake of emphasis: Whichever view we 
hold has nothing whatever necessarily to do with 
religion. Theology is supposed to deal with 
facts, religion is an experience. In our theology 
we may be fundamentalist or modern, orthodox 

67 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


or heretic, old theology or new, and whatever 
we are, we may be altogether religious or alto- 
gether lacking in religion; theology and religion 
are in no sense identical and should never be 
confused, the one with the other. ‘The tragedy 
of the present situation lies in the fact that the 
controversy deals so exclusively with questions 
of theology that the eyes of multitudes are 
blinded to the real essentials of true religion. 
The second principle I want to emphasize has 
to do with the difference between facts and truth. 
A. statement which agrees with an outward and 
objective existence is a fact, or more accurately, 
it is the statement of a fact. A statement which 
agrees with a subjective and invisible principle 
is a truth. Strictly speaking, truth includes 
fact, that is, all correct statements of fact are 
true; but all truths are not fact. It is a fact 
that Cesar crossed the Rubicon; it is a truth 
that God is love. The one statement is in har- 
mony with an objective existence; the other is in 
harmony with a subjective principle. Take, for 
example, the old story of Prometheus which has 
found its chief literary expression in the great 
tragedy of Aeschylus, entitled, “Prometheus 
Bound.” According to the story, Prometheus 
stole the divine fire from the gods, and as a 
68 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


punishment for his daring he was doomed to be 
chained to a rock from which there was no es- 
cape, and where the vultures gnawed constantly 
at his vitals. In literature we call this story of 
Prometheus “a myth.” But what is a myth? 
It is an attempt of a primitive people to state 
an abstract truth in concrete form. For primi- 
tive peoples, like children, cannot conceive an 
abstract truth; they can conceive it only in con- 
crete illustration. Sometimes to express such 
truths they take a legend, pour the truth into 
it, and it becomes a mythical legend; sometimes 
they invent the story to interpret the truth,— 
it is then a mythical poem or fiction. A myth, 
therefore, is not fact, but it may contain truth. 
The Promethean myth contains no actual facts, 
but it reveals a great truth which, in its simplest 
form is this: Humanity, like Prometheus in the 
old story, has aspired through the light of in- 
telligence to become even as the gods. But it 
finds itself chained fast by ignorance and super- 
stition, by selfishness and greed, by tyranny 
and oppression in a hundred forms, and yet, 
humanity never gives up the struggle to shake 
itself free from these shackles that bind and keep 
it back from the heights it has descried in vision. 
The gnawing vultures are only the vivid symbol 
69 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of that spiritual anguish that every man and 
woman endures in the consciousness of the wide 
gulf that ever exists between the flying ideal 
and the lagging real,—between things-as-they- 
are and things-as-they-ought-to-be. It is this 
truth contained in the old myth that stirs the 
heart as we read the tragedy of Aeschylus today. 

This is why we study the old folk-lore, the 
legends and myths of early peoples; not be- 
cause they give us facts, but because they en- 
shrine truths that these early peoples had grasped 
but which they were unable to express in ab- 
stract form. Legend, myth, poetry,—these were 
the earliest, and the natural forms in which the 
ancient mind gave expression to the truths it 
perceived; and this is why we reverence today 
every legend and myth from the past, and seek 
to interpret its symbolic meaning. But the same 
principle holds of all great poetry, modern as well 
as ancient, of all great fiction, of all allegorical 
writing like that of James Branch Cabell. We 
do not read poetry or fiction or allegory for facts, 
but in just the measure that they are great lit- 
erature, we do find in them truths as well as _ 
beauty. And the world would be impoverished 
immeasurably if we should rule out of life and 

70 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


of literature all that was not based on actual, 
literal fact. 

Now for the application of our principle. 
These old doctrines we have been considering 
and that play so central a part in the present 
controversy, from the literary and scientific view- 
point are pure myths, that is, they are not based 
on facts as such; we of the modernist or sci- 
entific view-point do not seek to find facts in 
them; in the factual sense they are no longer 
true for us. But this is not to say that, there- 
fore, they are wholly false and without mean- 
ing. Like all myths, they may enshrine truth, 
even great truth for us who accept the scientific 
view-point as to their statement of “facts.” If 
we are honest, we must say very frankly we do 
not believe these doctrines. In their literal sense 
they do not contain facts for us. But, unless 
our minds and souls are absolutely devoid of all 
poetry, we must say just as frankly, behind 
the myth which these doctrines disclose, or con- 
tained within it, we do see the truth and we seek 
to interpret its meaning for our life today. With 
these two principles clearly in mind let us now 
proceed to discover where the truth really lies 
in these old myths. What is the religious value 
of these particular doctrines? 

aL 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


1—The Infallibility of the Bible. We have 
freed our minds of all idea of an infallible book. 
We have accepted the findings of science as to 
the many errors of various kinds which the Bible 
contains. Does it therefore follow that the Bible 
has lost all meaning for us, that it no longer con- 
tains truth for our minds and hearts? Let us 
see. The Bible is primarily a book of history, 
both in the old and new Testaments. We can- 
not understand it unless we see it in this light. 
There are three kinds of history: the factual, © 
the philosophical and the epic. Factual history 
undertakes simply to tell the facts. The writer 
of such history cares about nothing else. He 
does not inquire what the facts signify; what is . 
their human interest, what is their moral mean- 
ing; he only seeks to know what is the fact, and. 
he will sometimes spend weeks or even months 
in the investigation of a single date in order to 
secure accuracy in his facts. The best illlus- 
tration of factual history is found in an official 
report of a department or in the records of a 
census. 

The philosophical historian is one who is in- 
terested in facts chiefly because they illustrate . 
or enforce some theory. The facts are not ends 
in themselves; they are simply instruments in his 

72 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


hands; he summons his facts as a lawyer calls 
his witnesses, that they may testify on his be- 
half. Few scholars would go to Buckle’s “His- 
tory of Civilization” to get an accurate state- 
ment of the facts of the periods with which he 
dealt. Buckle wished to demonstrate a certain 
theory of civilization, and with great ingenuity 
he brought together the facts that had a bearing 
on that theory. He wrote a philosophical his- 
tory. 

Somewhere between these two is what may 
be called epic history. The epic historian is not 
interested in mere facts nor has he some particu- 
lar theory which he wishes to demonstrate. He is 
interested in certain phases of human life, and 
he uses the facts of history as the dramatist uses 
the creations of his imagination, to interpret hu- 
man life. Froude’s “Life of Erasmus” is a good 
illustration of epic history. Now the history 
of ancient times was epic history. The ancient 
peoples did not discriminate carefully between 
facts and fiction, between observation and imag- 
ination, between what they had‘seen and what 
they pictured to themselves. They knew noth- 
ing whatever about writing factual or scientific 
history. Their poetry, therefore, is historical 
poetry, having its roots in history; and their his- 

73 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


tory is poetical history, portrayed for the pur- 
pose of interesting their readers in certain phases 
of human life. The historicity of the siege of 
Troy has been pretty well established by Dr. 
Schliemann’s investigations; but to what extent 
Homer’s representation of the facts of that siege 
is historically correct it is impossible to de- 
termine. 

On the other hand, Herodotus, who is called — 
the “father of history,” writes for a purpose. 
He does not hesitate to use tradition, story, 
legend, fiction, myth,—anything that will help 
to make his history interesting. His purpose is 
not factual,—to tell just what happened; neither 
is it philosophical,—to demonstrate a theory; his 
purpose is to illustrate certain phases of Greek 
life and character in which he is profoundly in- 
terested,—to make clear to all time the renown 
of the Greek people. 

To this class Hebrew literature belongs. The 
Bible histories are epic histories. The various 
writers were interested in one phase of human 
life that may be summed up in the single sen- 
tence, God is in his world. ‘They believed in a 
living God who dwelt with his people, in a God 
who was a righteous being, and who demanded 
righteousness and nothing else from his people. 

74 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


They believed in the faith of the prophets that 
Jehovah was able to pluck up and pull down, 
or to plant and to build the nation at his own 
will. They saw in the history of their own people 
the witness of the presence and the power of 
this living God. They did not write factual his- 
tory, nor philosophical history, but epic history, 
—and epic history from the moral and religious 
view-point. This is what gives to the Biblical 
literature its peculiar character. It is of all lit- 
erature the most religious, because of all other 
histories, ancient or modern, it endeavors to in- 
terpret the part the living God took in the his- 
tory of a great and peculiar people. 

When we clearly grasp this view of the Bible, 
we are set free from the slavery of the letter, and 
are enabled to appreciate its spirit. We do not 
go to the Bible for historical accuracy, or scien- 
tific knowledge, or moral philosophy as such. 
The Bible is one of the greatest books in all litera- 
ture dealing with the moral and religious life. 
As Matthew Arnold somewhere says: You 
might as well expect a man with a sense for litera- 
ture refusing to cultivate it by reading the great 
literature of the Greeks, or a man with the sense 
for art failing to cultivate it by studying the great 
paintings of earlier times, as to expect a man with 

75 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


a sense for the moral and spiritual life refusing 
to cultivate it by reading the Bible. The great 
characters of the Bible, epic though the narratives 
are, are full of inspiration and of warning even 
for today. ‘The great poetry of the Bible still 
breathes the universal aspiration of the human 
heart. The Gospel narratives, regardless of their 
historical accuracy, possess a simplicity and a 
beauty of which we never tire. The matchless 
parables of Jesus reveal truths that no man can 
deny. And the burning messages of the Hebrew 
Prophets or the lofty idealism of a Paul or John 
still stir the heart and arouse the soul of the most 
modern man alive. As the great literature of a 
people “gifted with a genius for religion,” the 
Bible reveals the struggle of this people with the 
moral and spiritual problems that in some form 
confront all earnest men and women. The Bible 
is “inspired” for me in just the degree that it 
inspires me to nobler striving and better living; 
it is the great book of conduct. But its “inspira- 
tion” is no whit different in kind than that which 
I find in the sacred scriptures of other peoples; 
nay more, it is the same inspiration that I find in 
the great poet, the great novelist, the great phi- 
losopher, of any age or clime, whose writings 
arouse in me new strivings toward the heights of 
716 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


character. This, perhaps, may suggest the re- 
ligious value of the Bible, of which the doctrine 
of the Bible’s infallibility is only the merest sym- 
bol. In refusing to accept the doctrine of an 
inerrant book, we also refuse to reject whatever 
of truth or beauty or inspiration the Bible may 
contain. In striking off the shackles of the letter 
we enter into the freedom of the spirit in our ap- 
preciation of this great literature. 

2.—The Virgin Birth of Jesus. In accepting 
the verdict of historical and literary criticism as 
well as that of biology, that Jesus was born of a 
human father and mother like the rest of us, does 
it follow that the greatness of his character 1s 
therefore dimmed, or that his teachings have lost 
their power, as the fundamentalists would have 
us believe? What are the religious values of the 
beautiful Birth stories, even after we have dis- 
carded them as factual history? If we were to 
open the pages of the Gospel narratives for the 
first time with our minds absolutely free from 
all the theological implications that have been put 
upon their statements, and with our modern 
knowledge of the epic or poetic form in which 
the histories of early times invariably found ex- 
pression, also remembering that a Virgin Birth 
was the usual way in which the ancient mind was 

a. 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


able to account for the truly exceptional char- 
acter, what would be our impressions? 

Would we not feel at the outset that here was 
a man who, early in his life, took his place with 
the great prophets, seers and reformers of every 
age and clime? He lived in two worlds,—the 
world of ideals and visions and dreams, and the 
world of things-as-they-are,—whereas most 
people, then as now, live only in one world. But, 
unlike the idealist of those times Jesus did not 
flee from the real world of men and of human 
problems into some desert fastness or anchorite’s 
cave, there to spend his days alone with his 
dreams. He refused to turn his back upon the 
real world, to separate himself from the life of 
his fellows, to close his eyes to the wrongs and 
injustices under which men and women suffered. 
He dared what only the few great souls have 
dared throughout all history,—he dared to be- 
lieve that the ideal world of which he dreamed 
and the real world in which men lived and toiled 
and suffered might actually approach each other, 
and that at length,—perhaps far off,—the two 
widely sundered worlds might indeed become one. 
And as this dream gradually took possession of 
his entire being it came to be the great dominat- 
ing, all-compelling purpose of his life,—to make 

78 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


this ideal world real. The great decision of his 
life was made when he decided to stay with men 
and women and little children, to press his heart 
close to the problems they were facing, to share 
their bitterest lot, and to realize his dream, if 
at all, in men and with men and through men. 

He believed in God, though he never tried to 
define Him nor did he waste time speculating ~ 
about Him. He believed that God was the deep- 
est life of his life, the strongest power within him, 
the best he knew, the highest he saw. But he also 
believed that what God was to him, He was to all 
men, and that the best and highest he knew as 
God could be known by all men. He believed 
that the true Kingdom of God was within man, 
—within every individual being. He dared to 
dedicate himself to the stupendous task of mak- 
ing these two worlds one simply because of his 
profound faith in God and man, or better still, 
his faith in the God in man. He refused to be- 
lieve that “you cannot change human nature”’; 
he knew the limitless possibilities of human nature 
and he dared to believe that the best in human 
nature could be discovered and _ developed, 
brought to the surface and realized, at length, in 
noble, unselfish character. 

Just when he adopted his method for making 

: 79 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


these two worlds one, we do not know, but early 
in his ministry it is clear that he cared little about 
organization as such. He knew nothing about 
any church and he never instituted a new syna- 
gogue. He gathered a few friends about him, but 
they constituted a loose brotherhood rather than 
an organization. He never talked about the- 
ology. He never referred to any Virgin Birth. 
He never gave them acreed. He was their friend 
and companion, their teacher and guide. He 
talked informally, sometimes with his friends, 
often with small groups, and occasionally to the 
crowds, and his constant theme was the making 
real his dream of the two worlds becoming one. 

He made it very clear that the forces in which 
men trusted were as nothing to him in the realiza- 
tion of his dream, that pomp and power, wealth 
and success as the world reverenced these things, 
had no place in his dreams. It was just as evi- 
dent that he had no confidence whatever in force 
and violence, in armies and navies, as the solution 
of the world’s problems. The method he taught 
and employed was very different. It sounded 
strange and foolish to the people of his day; it is 
just as strange and foolish to most people today. 
He dared to teach that moral and spiritual forces 
were the greatest forces in the world, and that 

80 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


some day they would supplant armies and navies. 
He taught that kindness and sympathy, leading 
to mutual understanding, would do more to estab- 
lish peace than all the armies in the world. He 
taught that when unselfishness conquered selfish- 
ness, codperation replaced competition, and love 
dispelled hate, then justice would become possible 
and righteousness would fill the whole earth. In 
a word, he taught that when men came to know 
themselves as brothers of all who live everywhere, 
then the spirit of good-will to all would dominate 
human lives, and peace and happiness would 
come inevitably to such men of good-will, and 
through them to all mankind. 

The best part of it all is, that he himself lived 
his dream. He not only talked about this ideal 
life but he lived it every day in thought, in word 
and in deed. It is no wonder he “spoke with 
authority and not as the scribes.” It is not 
strange that “the common people heard him 
gladly.” Neither is it to be wondered at that 
gradually the powers of state and church arrayed 
themselves against him, for the realization of his 
dream meant the downfall of their petty plans. 
And so it was quite inevitable that one day he 
was led forth to the little hill called Golgotha, 
and there put to death between two thieves. 

81 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


As the years passed by, the love and reverence 
which such a personality had inspired in the hearts 
of the people, tremendously deepened by his 
tragic death, found natural and inevitable ex- 
pression in many stories of what he was and what 
he did. These stories were told and re-told by 
word of mouth for more than a generation before 
they were reduced to any writing. In an age that 
knew nothing about factual history as such, all 
of whose historical writing was epic, in which 
facts mingled freely with poetry, an age that had 
never heard of science with its reign of law, to 
which everything that could not be explained was 
a “miracle,” an age that was accustomed to ac- 
count for its heroes by a virgin birth, is it strange 
that when finally these stories were gathered to- 
gether and put into written form they should 
have contained fiction as well as fact, poetry as 
well as prose, so that what we have today in 
these Gospel narratives is imperishable epic, or 
poetic history, not one word of which would we 
change, but which never should be interpreted lit- 
erally as we would interpret scientific history? 
We have in the last part of the nineteenth century 
a clear illustration of the way in which fancy and 
imagination, reverence and love combine to cre- 
ate stories about an exceptional character that 

82 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


may have had no basis in fact, and yet that give 
expression to the truth about that character. Al- 
though he died only about sixty years ago, it is 
well-nigh impossible today to separate fact from 
poetry in the many stories that have grown up 
about the life of Abraham Lincoln. 

Where lies the truth, then, in the Virgin Birth 
story? Not, for us, in any literal historicity, but 
in the surpassing’ greatness of the life that called 
forth such a story. If we mean by “God” the 
highest we know and the best we can conceive, 
then surely “the spirit of God” dwelt in him. 
How could any virgin birth possibly add to the 
nobility of such a life? We reverence him not 
for his parentage or the manner of his birth, but 
for what he was in himself and for the truth he 
uttered. The Virgin Birth story, interpreted 
literally, as the fundamentalists interpret it, sepa- 
rates Jesus from the life of humanity and makes 
of him a fictitious being, neither altogether hu- 
man nor altogether divine; this story interpreted 
freely and poetically makes him one with all the 
great religious seers and sages and prophets of 
the past; nay more, it makes him one with all 
men in whom the spirit of the highest and best is 
struggling for fuller, freer expression. The dif- 
ference between Jesus and other men is not a dif- 

; 83 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ference of birth but of spirit; it is a quantitative 
not a qualitative difference; the same “divine” 
spirit dwells in all men to some degree, that dwelt 
in him in a superlative degree. And that is why 
the human Jesus towers so far above us all in 
the things of the moral and spiritual life. 

3.—The Physical Resurrection of Jesus. All 
that we have said of the birth stories applies to 
the stories of the resurrection. Regarded liter- 
ally as the fundamentalist believes them, we find 
ourselves involved in contradictions and dis- 
crepancies, and in statements that to the modern 
mind seems altogether absurd and incomprehen- 
sible. ‘Taken poetically, as the natural expres- 
sion in such an age of the love and reverence 
which Jesus had inspired, the story of the phys- 
ical resurrection reveals not a “fact,” but a pro- 
found and most inspiring truth. Where is the 
truth? That life is mightier than death, that love 
is stronger than death, that the highest and best 
in human personality is never destroyed by death, 
that death itself is never the end of life but only 
an incident in life, that the influence of the truly 
noble life lives on through the ages, that what 
such a life really is and does remains as the per- 
manent possession of mankind forever. 

Jesus died as all men aie and his body was 

84 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


reverently laid away in the Syrian tomb there to 
be mingled with the dust of earth, but his spirit 
lived on; and it still lives today as the constant 
source of courage and inspiration to all who 
would share the life of the spirit. His great 
dream of one day bringing this old world-as-it-is 
into closer harmony with the world-as-it-ought- 
to-be is the compelling dream of our lives today. 
His noble manhood shames us for our littleness, 
his unflagging zeal for the Kingdom of God on 
earth lifts us out of our self-absorption, his dis- 
interested love leads us away from our selfishness. 
In just the measure that we share his spirit,— 
the spirit of all the great and good who have 
walked this earth,—do we attain to that real im- 
mortality, of which the resurrection stories are 
only the faintest symbol. 

4.—The Second Coming of Christ. Where 
lies the truth in the old apocalyptic vision of the 
heavens opening and Jesus appearing in the 
clouds with his cohorts of angels to destroy the 
wicked and establish in person the reign of 
righteousness on earth? If the fundamentalists 
possessed any imagination or read these passages 
with any poetry in their souls how could they con- 
fuse what they accept as literal fact with the great 
and inspiring truth which this ancient poetry 

85 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


enshrines? If we believe that the spirit of truth 
and love, the spirit of justice and righteousness, | 
the spirit of peace and good-will dwelt in him, 
then every truth bringer, every life that sur- 
renders to love’s power, every approach to more 
of justice in human relations, every rebirth of the 
spirit that makes for righteousness, is in reality 
the “coming of Christ”? again. What could the 
personal Jesus do were he to come to earth today 
more than he did nineteen hundred years ago? 
He could teach again the same great truths, he 
might apply them more directly to our problems 
of today, he could live the life of disinterested 
love, but he would encounter the same opposition 
from the powers-that-be today that he did then, 
and he might meet the same fate.. I say it with 
all reverence, it is not the personal Jesus come 
to earth again that the world needs today; it is, 
rather, the spirit of truth and love become in- 
carnate in our lives; it is the more earnest and 
intelligent striving for justice on our part, it is 
the translation of righteousness into all the mani- 
fold relations of men and nations. Until we are 
ready and willing to live the true and loving, the 
just and righteous life ourselves, the spirit of | 
Jesus can never come in its fulness. The truth 
of the old doctrine is found in every form of 
86 


WHERE IS THE TRUTH? 


moral and social progress that has its place in the 
life of mankind,—a truth of which the doctrine 
is only the merest symbol. 

Most imperfectly have I tried to suggest where 
the truth lies in the present controversy between 
fundamentalists and modernists. From the 
purely factual view-point, our sympathies are all 
with the modernists simply because we belong to 
this age and have inevitably been influenced, in 
all our thinking, by the spirit and conclusions of 
modern science. These doctrines as they stand 
and as they are believed by the fundamentalists 
are, frankly, only beautiful myths to us; we read 
them not as the record of facts but as beautiful 
poetry, and as such we honestly and reverently 
seek to find the truths they enshrine. It is the 
moral and spiritual values of these old doctrines 
that we crave, just as we seek them in all the 
myths that have come down from the past. And 
when the present storm of controversy has passed 
away, it will be these values that will remain as 
man’s permanent spiritual heritage from the 
past. The letter killeth and must be superseded 
by the spirit which alone brings life. 


87 


IV 
THE REALIZATION OF GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


(aa NE of the most impressive things, as 
B) we trace the development of man’s life 
on this planet, is the way in which he 
= has continually been outgrowing his 
older notions of God, and yet for some reason 
he has never outgrown God. His ideas about 
God are constantly changing, being revised and 
left behind, and yet the idea of God persists. 
Again and again, men have arisen to declare that 
at last God had been ruled out of the Universe, 
and that henceforth man was to steer his course, 
freed from this “old superstition of the past”; 
and in the very generation that listened to such 
confident assertions, thoughtful minds have be- 
gun anew the task of reformulating their concep- 
tions of God in closer harmony with the deepest 
thought of their day. 

It was Emerson who said: “When the Gods . 
arrive, the half-gods go.” This is just what has 
been taking place ever since man, “the worship- 

88 






GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


ing animal,” first made his appearance on this 
planet. Man has been constantly discovering 
and rediscovering God, as his experience has 
broadened, as his knowledge of truth has widened, 
as his insight into the meaning of life has deep- 
ened. Low and narrow ideas of God have ever 
been giving way to higher and broader ideas; in- 
adequate and unworthy notions have disappeared 
with the coming of more adequate and nobler 
notions; imperfect and limited conceptions have 
vanished with the dawning of more ethical and 
truly spiritual conceptions. 

The race has very gradually come to its knowl- 
edge of God through its slowly growing knowl- 
edge of itself, for we must not forget that every 
“revelation of God” which has become enshrined 
in the Bibles of the race, was first of all made in 
the inner consciousness of some individual. At 
last we are coming to see that “revelation” does 
not consist in God’s removing some veil which 
hides Him from the searching gaze of man, but 
rather, in man’s removing the veil from before his 
own eyes, which has been blinding him to the 
truth and beauty and goodness of God. The true 
God always “arrives” to take the place of the 
“half-gods,” as man makes the discovery of his 
truer, deeper self. 
. 89 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Everyone believes in God, and no one should 
refuse to assert his belief in God, simply because 
he cannot bring himself to believe in the God of 
some theologian, or as expressed in some creed. 
Strictly speaking, there is no such person as an 
atheist or infidel. Atheism and infidelism are 
relative, not absolute terms. A man may believe 
in a different God, or he may believe less or more 
about God than do others, but if he reflects at all 
he is forced to believe in “something” that con- 
stitutes God for him. 

We need to remember that the real God is the 
God expressed in the universe and in ourselves. 
The God defined in the creeds is, at best, only an 
approximation of the real God, the outgrowth 
of the mental, moral and spiritual limitations of 
the age that produced the creed. One may think 
with Haeckel that the Universe is the outcome 
of the fortuitous interaction of material atoms, 
without consciousness or intelligence behind 
them; or one may believe that the Cosmos is the 
product of Mind, that “it means intensely and 
means good”; but whether one calls himself a 
materialist or an idealist, no one can help believ- 
ing in the Power that is revealed in the Universe, . 
in the Life Force out of which all-that-is has 
come. And this belief in a Power, or Life Force, 

90 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


even if one attempts to formulate his belief no 
further, is nevertheless a belief in God. For 
whatever else God may be, He must be the great 
Life Force whence all proceeds. 

We are not concerned just now with the many 
questions that spring to the mind as soon as we 
begin to think about God. The theories, specu- 
lations and philosophies about God are legion, 
and yet the modern mind has grown less dogmatic 
and more humble, and is content to confess itself 
frankly agnostic as to many things men have 
glibly affirmed about God in the past. More and 
more it is becoming clear that we approach God 
more closely through feeling than through in- 
tellect, that our truest knowledge of God comes 
through our deepest intuitions rather than 
through logical processes. 

To admit frankly that there are many things 
we do not and cannot know about God, is not to 
exhibit less but more of real faith than to seek to 
measure God’s power with one’s little yardstick 
or compress all the meaning of God into one’s 
limited definitions. For every definition always 
defines the person who makes it far more truly 
than the thing defined, since our definitions do 
not reveal the absolute meaning of what we de- 
fine nearly so accurately as they define ourselves, 

91 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


that is, our powers of perception or understand- 
ing. It is for this reason that all our definitions 
of God are really the expressions of the meaning 
of God in terms of our own mental, moral and 
spiritual limitations. It is thus that we are com- 
ing to see that the sense of God, or the conscious- 
ness of God, is the practically important thing 
for our lives, regardless of what theories we may 
hold or how we may formulate our philosophy 
about God. 

To primitive man, in all his ignorance and 
superstition, the gods were close, near and imme- 
diate. Nature was man’s first Bible; and in the 
sun, the stars, the waves, the storm, the rhythmic 
passing of the seasons—seed-time and harvest— 
he felt the constant presence of the Great Spirit, 
or of lesser spirits, and realized their ceaseless ac- 
tivity. And then, with the gradual building up 
of religious systems, God was removed farther 
and farther from the individual soul. Theology 
embalmed Him in the abstractions of the creeds; 
ecclesiasticism sought to shut Him up in Temples 
and Cathedrals and Churches; His means of com- 
munication with the soul were limited to the 
sacraments administered by properly ordained. 
priests; it was decreed that worship of Him must 
be in accordance with certain rites and cere- 

92 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


monies; great institutions thrust themselves be- 
tween the soul and God, and sought to have men 
believe that His relation to them was a relation 
of mediation, and that He never could come into 
direct and immediate contact with the soul. To 
quote from an eminent theologian: “God is a 
being of an essentially different nature from 
man, between whom and Him there is no kin- 
ship.” 

Every great religion has always had its be- 
ginnings in the consciousness that God was close 
and near and immediate, but the subsequent de- 
velopment of every religion has succeeded in 
erecting barriers between the soul and God that 
have served to remove Him from any vital re- 
lationship with the rank and file of persons. And 
so the fundamental mission of every truly great 
religious reformer has always been to rescue God 
from creeds and institutions and bibles, and re- 
enthrone Him once again in the soul of the indi- 
vidual; but those who have come after, have 
usually succeeded in substituting the means for 
the end, and in making the machinery of religious 
organization take the place of religion, which is 
ever and always “‘the life of God in the soul of 
man.” Man has always been his own worst 
enemy in religion as well as in everything else. 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


And all the time that man has been saying, in his 
search for God, “‘Lo, He is here, or lo, He is 
there,” the divine whisper has been sounding, for 
those who had ears to hear, “Lo, the Kingdom 
of God is within you.” 

It is to the credit of this modern age that the 
human spirit has once more risen in its strength 
and is determined to find God in the near and 
immediate. Its demand is not for a God who 
once was, but for a God who now is; not a God 
in the skies, but a God on the earth; not a God 
of some distant heaven, but a God whom we meet 
and recognize in everyday experiences. It is for 
this reason that so many people today are be- 
coming increasingly impatient with creeds and 
dogmas, rites and ceremonies, sermons and 
churches. Instinctively they feel that these 
things do not constitute religion, and that in some 
way they have come between the soul and its own 
inalienable right of immediate access to the lv- 
ing God. It is nothing else than the outraged 
spirit in man demanding its rights with God. 

He little understands the religious unrest of 
these times who does not see that, deeper than 
all else, is this well-nigh universal thirst for a- 
real God; that is, a God who is real, who lives, 
moves and has His being in one’s own personal 

94 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


experience. Just as Emerson asked the question 
in his Divinity School Address in 1838: “Why 
should we not have a first-hand and immediate 
experience of God?’ so men everywhere today are 
crying out for an original, first-hand experience 
of God. Earnest souls are asking why, if God 
indeed be the living God, it should be necessary 
for men of today to derive all their knowledge 
of Him from ancient prophets who lived and died 
thousands of years ago? Do we not stand as 
close to the original sources of the knowledge of 
God as did the ancients,—the world of conscious- 
ness within and the world of nature without? 
Why cannot we have our own experience with 
God, instead of depending so wholly on second- 
hand experiences of ‘others? Towards the close 
of his life, Tennyson once said toa friend: “My 
chief desire is to have a new vision of God.” In 
these words the great poet has voiced the deepest 
desire of all seriously minded men and women. 
If we are ever to regain the “lost sense of God,” 
-which Tolstoi declared to be the fundamental 
need of our age, it will only be as in some way 
we do succeed in catching a fresh vision of God. 

A few Sundays ago I listened to a sermon 
on the subject “What does it mean to love God?” 
—a sermon that was not only beautifully ex- 

95 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


pressed, but that was also profoundly suggestive 
—in which God was construed in terms of “the 
Invisible.” In this connection I want to ask you 
to think of God in terms of Creative Life, as also 
helping towards the new vision of God, that is so 
sadly needed. And I want you to think of God 
in these terms, not because they exhaust the 
meaning of God, but because they are funda- 
mental and give an expression to the thought of © 
God which I think we can all accept, whatever 
may be our different beliefs about God. At least, 
it may furnish a starting point from which we 
may pursue our quest still further. 

In his striking book, “Creative Evolution,” 
Henri Bergson, the well-known French Philoso- 
pher, uses these words: “There is in each of us 
a particle of Life Force which is above intellect 
as much as it is above our physical powers. ‘This 
Life Force which we find in every living thing 
must have come from a source,—you may call it 
God.” This elan vital, or Life Force of Berg- 
son, which indwells all things, is recognized and 
accepted by all scientists and philosophers today, 
by whatever name they may call it. It is the 
“infinite and eternal energy from whence all 
things proceed” of Herbert Spencer. It is the 
“God in whom we live and move and have our 

96 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


being” of Paul. Suppose we take this thought 
of God, not as a final or exhaustive thought, but 
as a conception of modern thought that seeks to 
construe God in terms of creative life instead of 
in terms of the older metaphysics. ‘Then, what- 
ever else God may be, if He is the Creative Life 
in all things, what follows? 

First, as respects man’s relation to nature, the 
Creative Life of God is everywhere present. 
Most people still believe that some time in the 
far-away past, God made the world; whereas the 
real truth is that Gud is always making the world. 
Creation is not an act in the past, but is an eter- 
nal process that is even now taking place before 
our very eyes. “Through every grass-blade,” 
says Carlyle, “the glory of the present God still 
beams.” It is the mysterious Life Force, always 
at work, everywhere present, that is silently and 
continually doing the wondrous work of creation. 
It is sometimes said that the operations of nature 
are spontaneous; and that is exactly what they 
are. This is the meaning of Divine Immanence. 
“Spontaneous,” used in this sense, does not mean 
at random and purposeless and undetermined; 
it means actuated and controlled from within by 
something indwelling and all-pervading’ and 
never absent anywhere. The intelligence which 

97% 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


guides things is not something external to the 
scheme, clumsily interfering with it by muscular 
action, as we are constrained to do when we inter- 
fere at all; but it is something within and in- 
separable from it, as human thought is within and 
inseparable from the action of our brains. 

Many are blind to the meaning,—to the fact 
even,—that there is a meaning in nature, just as 
an animal is blind to a picture and deaf to a 
poem; but to those whose eyes are open to see, 
the intelligence and purpose underlying the whole 
mystery of existence are keenly felt. To them, 
the lavish beauty of wild nature, of landscape, of 
sunset, of mountain and of sea are revelations of 
an indwelling “Presence,” rejoicing in its ma- 
jestic order. “There is a soul in all things and 
that soul is God,’”—the creative life in all that is. 
Every atom, every germ, every living organism, 
from lowest to highest, has within it a principle, 
a life force, a purpose, even a degree of conscious- 
ness appropriate to its position in the general 
scheme of things. ‘This mind, or consciousness, 
differs in its different manifestations, higher in 
the insect than in the vegetable, higher in the ani- 
mal than in the insect, higher in man than in the’ 
animal, and highest of all in the great souls of the 
BACE, 

98 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


It is to be questioned how many of the boys and 
girls, educated today in the mechanistic concep- 
tions of modern science, really see and feel in 
nature the “living Presence” that was so actual 
to men like Wordsworth or Ruskin or Emerson 
or Whitman or Jeffries, not to mention writers 
of an earlier day. And yet with all the light that 
modern science has thrown upon nature, it needs 
to be remembered that no scalpel has ever yet 
revealed the mysterious secret of life, and no 
laboratory has ever yet discovered the source of 
life. The Life Force that indwells all things is 
still the supreme mystery. Our knowledge of 
science,—Botany, Geology, Zoology, Biology, 
Astronomy, etc.,—has given us new classifica- 
tions and descriptions, new laws and terminolo- 
gies that help to explain the outside of things and 
of organisms, but they have not yet succeeded in 
explaining the inner life principle that creates 
things and organisms. And they need not and 
should not blind our eyes to the mysterious 
“Presence,” the Creative Life of God, which 
meets us face to face wherever we turn in nature. 
When we look for it beneath the outer form,— 
“the garment of the Infinite,”’—we do see the 
Divine everywhere, just because we are con- 

99 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


stantly in the presence of the Creative Life of 
God. 


“Earth’s crammed with Heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God.” 


But again, as respects time, if God is the Cre- 
ative Life, whatever else He may be, there is no 
time when He is not present in the life of hu- 
manity. ‘There are many devout people whose 
sense of the presence of God seems to be almost 
entirely historic. ‘They believe God was with 
Abraham and Moses and Joshua, with Isaiah, 
Amos and Micah, and that over the confused and 
painful wanderings of the Israelites a divine pur- 
pose presided; but in the world of today they see 
on every side the evidences of an evil spirit at 
work, with few or no signs of a divine order or 
“Presence” in the life of man. Carlyle, who had 
a keen historic sense, expressed passionately in 
his last years the longing that God would speak 
again. He could hear the divine voice speaking 
through Knox, Luther and Cromwell of an 
earlier time, but he could not detect it in the mes- 
sages of Maurice or Stanley or Bright of his own 
day. It almost seemed to him that God had 
vanished out of human history when the stern’ 
soul of Cromwell took its flight. 

So there are multitudes of people who believe 

100 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


in a past God, but who have a very slight con- 
sciousness of a present God. They always speak 
of God in the past tense. Older peoples seem to 
them to have been divinely led, while they 
stumble on blindly in a helpless confusion of aims 
and ideals; other ages seem to them sacred, while 
this age seems devoid of all divine recognition. 
And yet if God is the Creative Life, He has al- 
ways been in the world, is just as truly and fully 
in the world today as He has ever been in the 
past. What is the essential meaning of what is 
going on in Ireland or Egypt or Persia or India 
or Russia today, if it is not to be found in the 
deep stirrings of the Creative Life in the hearts 
and minds of these peoples as they reach out, 
vaguely, blindly and more or less crudely—and 
often by methods that we could wish were other- 
wise—toward what they feel is a richer, fuller, 
freer and juster life for them and their children? 
How are we to interpret the deep stirrings of un- 
rest in the industrial world, if not in terms of the 
same Creative Life that is seeking, in the hearts 
and minds of the workers of all lands, freedom 
from the injustices and wrongs under which they 
have suffered down through the centuries? What 
means the lofty dreams of a better World Order, 
in which all men and nations shall join hands 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


in the common cause of service to all humanity, 
that are stirring in the hearts and minds of multi- 
tudes throughout the world today, except that the 
Creative Life is present here and now, and seek- 
ing larger and fuller expression? The history of 
the last few years, if we only had eyes to read 
it aright, would contain for us a disclosure of 
the Divine Will and purpose as clear and au- 
thoritative as that contained on any page of the 
Old or New Testaments. The difference be- 
tween various ages is not that the Creative Life 
of God is present in a fuller degree in some than 
in others, but rather that some ages perceive and 
realize the Divine Presence more fully than do 
others, or because some ages are willing to be- 
come the expression of the Creative Life to a 
degree that others are not. 

If God is the Creative Life, whatever else He 
may be, it is also evident that He must be present 
in some degree and form in the life and history 
of all peoples. Here in the western world we 
have said for centuries that God made the Jews 
the channel of His revelation to the world, but 
the Egyptian, the Phoenician, the Greek, the 
Roman, the peoples of India or China or Africa, 
worked out a purely human destiny in a purely 
human way. They had no inspiration from the 

102 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


Divine Spirit, and they contributed no revelation 
of the Divine nature. The history of the Jews, 
we say, therefore, is divine history, while the his- 
tory of all other peoples and races is profane. 
But this is worse than a partial view, it is an 
actual kind of atheism; it sets about the Creative 
Life that is everywhere present, the narrow limi- 
tations of human ignorance and prejudice. For 
centuries Christianity has taught that it alone 
was the true religion and that all of the other 
great world faiths were false, that its prophets 
alone were divinely inspired while the seers and 
sages of other religions were inspired by the 
Devil, and that therefore its adherents alone 
would be “saved,” while the adherents of all 
other faiths would be eternally “lost.” But as 
we read the sacred writings of other religions to- 
day, we discover that all the essential teachings 
as to moral and spiritual values are practically 
the same with those of Christianity, and the great 
leaders of all religions are singularly at one in 
their ideals, their purposes and their spirit. 
How preposterous seem such ideas today! In 
one breath, theology predicates omnipresence of 
God, in the next, it claims to find Him only in a 
“chosen people,” saved out of a vast host of dis- 
inherited and rejected. It is as if one should dis- 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


criminate between the children of the same family 
and declare that while one son bore the image of 
his Father, was the recipient of His love and 
bore his character, all the others were aliens and 
strangers, cut off from participation in the na- 
ture which was a common inheritance. It is such 
limited and unethical notions about God that 
underlie so much of the racial antagonisms and 
prejudices and bitternesses of today that are 
keeping the world torn asunder in the spirit of 
strife. It is only as we realize that, whatever else 
He may be, God is the Creative Life everywhere 
indwelling the life of all peoples, that we can 
understand the words, ‘““God hath not left Him- 
self without a witness among any people,” and 
those other words, “the Light that lighteth every 
man coming into the world.” So that while we 
gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to the 
Hebrew race for its incalculable contribution to 
the moral and religious life of mankind, we never- 
theless rejoice to find the truth, beauty and good- 
ness of the Creative Life of God expressing itself 
in the life of all peoples. | 

Still again, if God is the Creative Life, every- 
where present, then it follows that the “revela- 
tion” of God is one with life itself. To many peo- 
ple God reveals Himself exclusively through the 

104 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


Bible and the Church. These, they say, are the 
divine channels; all other channels are purely 
human. As we read the Bible itself, however, 
there is nothing to cause us to believe that the 
message of God came only through the men who 
wrote the sixty-six books of our Bible. And 
when we read the story of the formation of the 
Biblical Canon, there is no reason for believing 
that God ceased speaking through men when the 
Canon was closed. Just because God is the 
Creative Life, we know that He has always been 
speaking and must always continue to speak in 
countless ways and through countless lives. So 
we perceive God’s message to man as contained 
in all the great Bibles of the race, in the writings 
of so-called heathen,—men like Seneca and Mar- 
cus Aurelius,—in the great philosophers, the 
great poets, the great dramatists, the great novel- 
ists. And since the Creative Life is as truly in 
nature as in the soul of the Prophet, the truth of 
science is therefore as divine and authoritative as 
the truth of any Bible. Any fact anywhere, if 
it be a fact, is a revelation of God. But the 
Creative Life is also revealed in all forms of art 
—painting, sculpture and architecture—in music 
that has been called “the divinest of all the arts,” 
in every form of activity of the human spirit. 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


The whole material universe,—all history, all 
philosophy, all science, all literature, all art,— 
the entire life of man, cannot exhaust the revela- 
tion of the Creative Life that is everywhere. If 
we were to put into our Bibles all the great writ- 
ings, prose and poetry, and all the great art of 
every kind through which the Creative Life has 
spoken directly to our souls, it would contain 
very much more than the present sixty-six books. 
If we were truly conscious, in the deep realiz- 
ing sense, that God was Creative Life, always at 
work and everywhere present, then every day 
would be for us a sacred day, every task, even the 
humblest, would be a divine task, and every place 
would be a holy place. We should feel His near- 
ness on week-days as well as on Sunday; we 
should find Him in our daily work as we realized 
that it was God working in us and through us, 
whatever our task; we should know that He was 
present in the home, the office, the factory, the 
schoolroom and on the street, as truly and actu- 
ally as He is in the great Cathedral or the 
Church. For it is not the day, nor the place, nor 
the task that makes sacred, but ever and alone 
the spirit that realizes God as Creative Life, 
everywhere present and always revealing itself. 
But, in the last place, nowhere do we come 
106 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


closer to the real God as Creative Life than in 
the depths of our own consciousness, and in the 
lives of our fellows. The modern approach to 
God is not from without but from within. We 
do not begin first with God, as did the ancients, 
but with man; it is through man to God. Chron- 
ologically, God may come first, but it is not the 
chronological God whom we seek; it is the living 
God of the present who alone can satisfy man’s 
hunger and thirst. So that we do not seek God 
through logical processes, and then argue from 
our conclusions as to God’s relations to man. 
But we discover Him, if at all, in our own inner 
consciousness. We do not begin by defining 
Him; in fact we care less and less about any defi- 
nitions of God, for we realize that every defini- 
tion always leaves out more than it puts in. But 
we are intensely concerned with knowing, feeling, 
experiencing for ourselves the immediate sense of 
God. Weare learning at last that the pathway 
to God lies ever and always through man’s own 
inner being. This is not to disparage the paths 
that lead through nature to God; but it is to:con- 
fess that no one sees clearly the paths that lead 
through nature, until he has first learned to walk 
in the pathway that lies through human nature. 
This explains why Prof. James speaks of “the 
| 107 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


gods of Nature” and the “God of the inner life,” 
and why Mr. Wells makes the distinction be- 
tween the “Veiled Mystery” and the “God of the 
Heart.” For it is the Creative Life, as it finds 
expression in the inner life, or in the heart of 
man, who becomes for us the real God. 

Why this should be so becomes clear when we 
reflect on the manifestation of Creative Life in 
the inner life of man. It comes welling up in us, 
first, as consciousness, whose mystery no man has 
yet fathomed. Out of this consciousness within, 
come all our powers of thinking and feeling and 
willing, which are nothing less than manifesta- 
tions of the Creative Life of God, individualized 
in us. But wonderful as these are, it is only 
when we rise to the plane of the ideals, and come 
to realize that the power by which we create the 
ideal and visualize it to ourselves, the source of 
our aspiration toward the ideal which will not let 
us be content with anything less, the will by 
which we determine to dedicate ourselves to the 
realization of the ideal,—all these are the clearest 
and fullest expression of the Creative Life of 
God within ourselves. If I may state it in an- 
other way: The Creative Life of God, whether 
without or within, is One, but we become most 
fully conscious of the real God when the Crea- 

108 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


tive Life within ourselves finds expression in our 
ideals of the good, the beautiful and the true; and 
we come nearest to God when we surrender our- 
selves wholeheartedly to these ideals. For in the 
highest and most spiritual sense, God is the to- 
tality of our ideals. And what is thus true of 
ourselves is true of all men. The Creative Life 
of God dwells in every individual, as the source 
of consciousness, of mind, of heart, of will, but 
most clearly manifested in the creation of ideals 
and the awakening of aspiration toward those 
ideals. All men are, then, essentially divine, but 
all men are not equally conscious of the divine 
Creative Life within themselves, and all men do 
not equally surrender to its power in the crea- 
tion in them of the ideals which lift man toward 
the divine. 


“Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee 
Is not to know thine own divinity.” 


Or, as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it in his “Creed 
of a Scientist”: “All that exists, exists only by 
the communication of God’s Infinite Being. All 
that has intelligence, has it only by derivation 
from His sovereign reason; and all that acts, acts 
only from the impulse of His supreme activity. 
It is He who does all in all. It is He, who, at 

109 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


each instant of our life, is the beating of our 
heart, the movement of our limbs, the light of our 
eyes, the intelligence of our spirit, the soul of our 
soul.” Or, in the beautiful words of Josiah 
Royce: “God is the life of my life, the soul of my 
soul, the self of my self.” 

Now if this very imperfect but, let us hope, 
suggestive thought of God, as construed in terms 
of Creative Life, be in any sense true, how would 
it tend to affect our view of life? Suppose, for 
example, that God is not and never was the 
transcendent divine Being who dwelt beyond the 
stars, as so many of the theologians have de- 
clared. Suppose He did not create the world at 
some time in the past. Suppose He never has 
intervened from without in the world’s affairs, 
and that the old miracles that are recorded in our 
Bibles are simply the stories of early, ignorant, 
unsophisticated and superstitious people about 
things that seemed strange and unnatural to 
them, but that would seem to us far less strange 
and perfectly natural if they happened now? 
Suppose God is the eternal Life Force that has 
been finding expression from the beginning of be- 
ginnings, and that has brought forth this uni- 
verse, like a child born of a mother’s travail, as a 
means to His own self-expression and self- 

110 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


realization. Suppose that this universe is as 
much a necessity to God as the thought of a God 
is necessary to us. Suppose God is the in- 
dwelling life of the universe, of the remotest star 
and sun as well as of our planet—the indwelling 
life of the clod as well as of the soul, the spirit, 
as Paul put it, working in and through all things. 
Suppose all the struggle of life, sentient and in- 
sentient, is the struggle of this Creative Life of 
God for a richer and fuller and completer exist- 
ence. And suppose that the only way in which 
this Creative Life of God can find its highest and 
truest expression is in and through man, as man 
creates and surrenders himself to the real moral 
and spiritual values of life—the highest “revela- 
tion of God.” 

Suppose modern man with his democratic 
strivings and his new-born social consciousness, 
with all his vague dreams of a better world and 
his aspiration toward a life in which justice may 
have a larger place, represents the highest that 
God, as Creative Life, has thus far been able to 
accomplish in His own self-realization through 
man. Suppose you and I and others like us, are 
the instruments and media through which He is 
even now seeking to realize a larger expression of 
His life and win greater victories in His creation. 

111 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Suppose it is upon the mind and emotion and will 
which the Creative Life has brought to being in 
us that He depends for the greater life that is to 
be, and of which we sometimes think we have 
caught glimpses. Suppose that what God needs 
is not our prayers, our incense, and the easy 
homage of our lips, but our brains, our hearts, our 
wills, our very life-blood. Suppose that all the 
struggle we see today, and all that history re- 
veals, and all that the past that lies behind his- 
tory hides, is the process, slow and painful and 
costly, by which a diviner life is unfolding itself 
on this earth. Suppose it is only by means of 
this mighty struggle in which we are set—the 
good against the evil, the true against the false, 
love against hate,—that the goodness we asso- 
ciate with the thought of God can eventually be 
brought to realization and victory. 

Suppose all this, I say, and is there then no 
ground for a new kind of faith in a new vision of 
God? Suppose all this, and is there not visible 
at once a new meaning in all the struggle and 
travail of life? If this were all true, would not 
our strivings for democracy, and the aspirations 
of organized labor, and every noble movement 
among men today have a new significance? 

112 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


Would we not then see democracy as no longer a 
mere political experiment, but as a mighty new 
uprising and outreaching of the spiritual Life 
Force of the universe, and the struggle of the 
workers as the expression of the same Creative 
Life that is ever seeking a fuller measure of jus- 
tice and human brotherhood? If this were all 
true, there would no longer be any conflict be- 
tween religion and science and men would recog- 
nize and accept them both as the manifestations 
of the Truth that is One. Then would religion 
and science become the mutually. confirming 
voices, pointing the way toward “One God, One 
Law, One Element, and One Far-Off Divine 
Event, to which the whole creation moves.”’ 
Suppose all this, I have said. But is not the 
supposition highly probable and reasonable in the 
light of what we know to be the common testi- 
mony of science and knowledge, and in the light 
too of the stupendous problems, moral as well as 
physical, that are left unanswered by the older 
thought of God? I cannot but feel that it is 
along the lines of some such thought as this that 
the world will yet find its way to a new and more 
vital faith in God, and to a new and truer under- 
standing of life and life’s meaning and purpose. 
113 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Whatever else He may be—and we have in no 
sense exhausted the meaning of God,—God is 
the Creative Life of the universe, but we know 
Him best in ourselves, and we find Him most 
truly in our highest ideals and in the ideals of the 
collective life of humanity. As the old proverb 
puts it: God sleeping in the stone, awaking in the 
plant, coming to faint consciousness in the ani- 
mal, coming to fuller consciousness in man, and 
coming to fullest consciousness in the greatest 
souls of the race. 

In the beautiful poem of William Herbert 
Carruth, entitled, ““Kach in his own Tongue,” we 
find this conception of God expressed. In the 
first verse we see the Creative Life of God in its 
lower forms of manifestation but gradually 
reaching its truest expression, in the last verse, 
in the moral and spiritual life of those men and 
women who have consecrated themselves to the 
great ideals. 

“A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly-fish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cave-men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty 

And a face turned from the clod,— 
Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

114 


GOD AS CREATIVE LIFE 


A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite, tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, 
And the wild geese sailing high; 
And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the golden-rod,— 
Some of us call it Autumn, 


And others call it God. 


Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in; 
Come from the mystic ocean 
Whose rim no foot has trod,— 
Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God. 


A picket frozen on duty, 
A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
And Jesus on the rood; 
And millions who, humble and nameless, 
The straight, hard pathway trod,— 
Some call it Consecration, 


And others call it God.”’ 


115 


Vv 
WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


ore belief in the Divinity of Jesus, 
64 ses) under various forms of the Doctrine 

%9i| of the Incarnation, has always held a 
<2e=—) central place in the many different 
schemes of Christian theology. From the theo- 
logical view-point, it is this question that consti- 
tutes the real point of contention between the 
fundamentalists and the modernists in the 
churches today. And yet, it is quite obvious that 
the real difference is not so much in the belief in 
the Divinity of Jesus as it is in the interpretation 
of that belief. 

Both Dr. Grant and Dr. Fosdick profess to 
believe in the Divinity of Jesus, though both have 
preached sermons in which they disclaim belief 
m the literal historicity of the virgin birth stories. 
These modern “heretics” base their belief in the 
Divinity of Jesus on what he was, what he taught 
and what he did, while Bishop Manning and the 
fundamentalists base their belief on the literal- 

116 





WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


ness of the stories of the virgin birth. These lib- 
erals in the orthodox churches profess to see in 
Jesus “a portrait,” “a manifestation” or “a reve- 
lation” of God; the Bishop, on the other hand, 
using the exact language of the creed, claims 
that Jesus was God. To these liberals, Jesus 
was a divine man; to the Bishop, he was a human 
God. 

It may seem, at first glance, as if these differ- 
ent interpretations constituted “a distinction 
without a difference,” as if the whole controversy 
that is being waged today around the person of 
Jesus consisted merely in words and differences 
of definition in the terms used; but this is a super- 
ficial view, and those who hold it are missing the 
deep significance of all that is involved in the 
present theological controversy. The fact is that 
the view of Jesus, proclaimed by all the leading 
fundamentalists as the only correct view, be- 
longs to an age that is forever past; it grew nat- 
urally out of the conceptions of the Bible, of 
God, of the universe and of human life that were 
widely prevalent in a former age but that have 
become obsolete in the thinking of intelligent men 
today. In the light of modern Biblical scholar- 
ship, modern science and modern religious phi- 
losophy, the whole approach to the problem of 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Jesus has been tremendously altered over that 
of the creed-makers; the factors that enter into 
the problem are entirely different, the very terms 
in which the problem is interpreted are changed. 

The difference, then, between these liberals and 
the conservatives in the churches today goes far 
deeper than mere words; it grows out of a funda- 
mental difference of view-point in the under- 
standing of the universe, in the explanation of 
human life, in the conception of God and His 
relation to man, and in the interpretation of both 
human and divine. Let us seek to indicate 
briefly the influences that have made inevitable 
the liberal view of Jesus, as held by Dr. Grant, 
Dr. Fosdick and many others, and that has made 
impossible to intelligent minds the conceptions 
still entertained by the fundamentalists gen- 
erally. 

Modern Biblical scholarship has shown most 
conclusively that the virgin birth stories had no 
place in early Christianity, and that they were 
not used as arguments for the Divinity of Jesus 
until about the middle of the second century 
after Christ. Let me indicate briefly the evi- 
dence for this conclusion. 

Taking the Gospels as they stand, and begin- 
ming with Jesus himself, we find that he is no- 

118 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


where represented as alluding to any miraculous 
birth. On the other hand, there are passages 
which seem to point to his belief in a purely hu- 
man origin of himself as well as of the other mem- 
bers of his family. The language in which he is 
quoted as addressing his mother positively pre- 
cludes the possibility of his having regarded her 
as differentiated from all other mothers. Nor 
does Mary make any allusion to the birth of 
Jesus. Yet the earliest Gospel (Mark) aittri- 
butes to her, as to others, the words, “He is be- 
side himself,”’—-words which it would hardly 
seem she could have said of Jesus had she 
thought of him as miraculously born. 

The Apostle Paul was the earliest of the New 
Testament writers. He died about thirty-five 
years after Jesus. His letters were written be- 
tween the years 50 and 64 A.D., the first of them 
(Galatians) twenty years before the earliest of 
the Gospels. While the scholars are still uncer- 
tain as to the authorship of many of the epistles 
ascribed to him, the letter to the Galatians and 
that to the Romans are generally conceded to be 
the productions of the Apostle. It is in these, 
and only these, that Paul makes any mention of 
Jesus’ birth; and in these passages he makes no 
allusion to a “virgin” birth, but distinctly affirms 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


the altogether natural origin of Jesus. “Made 
of the seed of David, according to the flesh,” are 
the words he uses in his letter to the Romans; 
and in his letter to the Galatians he states the 
mode of Jesus’ birth in such a way as to indicate 
that it behooved him to be born in the same way 
as those who were to be redeemed—‘made of a 
woman, made under the law.” If, in presenting 
his view of Jesus as the Saviour of Mankind, he 
could have backed up his argument with an ac- 
count of a supernatural birth, what an incalcu- 
lable advantage it would have given him! If 
there already existed in his time such a belief, 
certainly Paul would have known it, for he was, 
you remember, the guest of Peter in Jerusalem 
for the space of a fortnight. During that visit 
he must have learned everything of vital im- 
portance concerning Jesus, and assuredly of a 
miraculous-birth story had such existed. It 
would thus seem that prior to the year 64, the 
year of Paul’s death, the belief in a supernatural 
birth of Jesus was not in circulation. 

When we turn to the so-called “triple tradi- 
tion,” which is the story of Jesus’ life in which 
the first three Gospels agree, we find they are 
not at one regarding the nature of his birth. For 
while Matthew and Luke contain a virgin-birth 

120 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


story, Mark has no birth story whatever. On the 
other hand, all three contain an account of Jesus’ 
baptism, and all three agree in representing 
Jesus as then receiving “the Holy Spirit.” Is it 
not a safe assumption that if these writers had 
known of a virgin birth they would have neces- 
sarily identified his receiving the Holy Spirit 
with that miraculous event, and not with his bap- 
tism? Hence the scholars are forced to conclude 
that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke 
formed no part of the original text, but were 
added at a later date. 

Mark’s Gospel is the next in the order of 
authorities to be consulted. It is the earliest of 
the Gospels, and was written about 70 A.D. 
Here, once more, we find no allusion to a virgin 
birth. Is it presumable that this earliest biogra- 
pher of Jesus would have begun his record with 
the baptism of Jesus and omitted the narrative 
of a virgin birth, had it been current in his day? 
Would he have mentioned Jesus as one of four 
brothers if he believed him to be born in an alto- 
gether different way from that in which they 
came into the world? In Mark’s Gospel we read 
the following version of the familiar proverb: “A 
prophet is not without honor, but in his own 
country, and among his own kin, and in his own 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


house.” But in Matthew and Luke, where the 
same proverb is quoted, the phrase and among 
his own kin is significantly omitted, because to 
have retained it would have been wholly incon- 
sistent with the presence in these Gospels of a 
virgin birth story. A prophet miraculously born 
would certainly not be without honor “among his 
own kin.”’ | 

Passing by, for the moment, the testimony of 
the First and Third Gospels, which come next in 
chronological order, let us note the testimony of 
the author of the Fourth Gospel, written prob- 
ably about the year 120 A.D. Here, again, no 
reference is made to a virgin birth, but twice in 
the course of the record Jesus is addressed as 
“the son of Joseph,” and on neither occasion does 
he contradict it. John’s Gospel, so called, is not 
written as an historical account of Jesus’ life, but 
rather as a philosophical interpretation of that 
life, in terms of the Philean philosophy of Alex- 
andria. The author of the Fourth Gospel, who- 
ever he may have been, was clearly imbued with 
the philosophy of the Alexandrian Jew, Philo, 
and he gets his idea of the logos doctrine, or “the 
‘Word Incarnate,” which constitutes the pro- 
logue to his Gospel, as well as the expressions 
“the only begotten Son,” “the Eternal Son of 

122 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


God,” and many others peculiar to his Gospel, 
direct from Philo’s writings. What a tremen- 
dous advantage it would have been to the author 
of the Fourth Gospel if he could have introduced 
his philosophical interpretation of Jesus with the 
statement that he had been miraculously born. 
The fact that the author believes Jesus to have 
been “the only begotten Son of God,” and yet 
never mentions the story of a miraculous birth, 
would seem to indicate that such a story was un- 
known to him. : 

We come next to a group of early Christian 
Fathers who flourished toward the close of the 
first century: Clement of Rome, Polycarp of 
Smyrna, and Ignatius of Antioch. In vain we 
search their writings for any allusion to a virgin 
birth of Jesus. All three of these Fathers dis- 
cuss the doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth was a 
manifestation of God,—the doctrine of the In- 
carnation, but none of the grounds on which they 
- argue in support of this belief concerns the na- 
tivity of Jesus. How immensely it would have 
strengthened their position could they have 
availed themselves of a belief in his miraculous 
birth! 

It is in the writings of Justin the Martyr, who 
flourished about the middle of the second century 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


after Christ, that we meet for the first time a ref- 
erence to the virgin birth of Jesus. But note 
what Justin says on the subject. He refers to it 
as a newly presented doctrine, and when asked if 
he believed it, replied by pointing to the Romans 
and the Greeks, who held a corresponding belief 
about the origin of their heroes, and Justin urged 
this fact as sufficient ground for a like belief in 
the supernatural paternity of Jesus. Was it not 
generally believed that Plato was the son of 
Apollo and Periktione, that Augustus was born 
of Jupiter and Attia, that Julius Cesar was born 
in the Temple of Apollo, the son of a God? 
How much more then might this be contended in 
the case of Jesus the Christ? This, in substance, 
was the thought of Justin as he worked it out in 
his “Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew.” Thus it 
appears that down to the year 140 A.D. not a 
single Christian writer, excepting the authors of 
Matthew and Luke, makes any reference to a 
virgin birth of Jesus. 
But when we turn to these two sources, we 
find that in several important particulars they 
are mutually contradictory and hopelessly irre- 
concilable. Close and careful study of their dis- 
crepancies has led many scholars to the conclu- 
sion that the opening chapters of the First and 
124 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


Third Gospels formed no part of the original 
record, but were given a place in it after the 
middle of the second century. Let us consider 
simply two facts in this connection. 

In the first place, we note that, while both 
Matthew and Luke present genealogies of Jesus, 
they are not only contradictory and mutually ex- 
clusive, but, what is strangest of all, they both 
trace the descent of Jesus through Joseph, and 
not through Mary. This would indicate that the 
authors regarded Jesus as the son of Joseph, and 
that, therefore, these genealogies were prepared 
before the virgin birth story had come into exist- 
ence. For if a writer believed that Jesus was 
born of a virgin, he certainly would have no ob- 
ject in tracing his genealogy through the pedi- 
gree of a human father. If the genealogy is 
correct, then the birth story is incorrect, and vice 
versa. 

But again, in the sixteenth verse of the first 
chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we read: “And 
Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of 
whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ.” 
But in the so-called “Sinaitic-Syriac” manu- 
script, discovered on Mount Sinai in 1892 by 
Mrs. Agnes Lewis, and revealing a Syriac ver- 
sion which is now our earliest witness to the text 

125 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of the Gospels, we find this verse rendered as 
follows: “Jacob begat Joseph. Joseph, to whom 
was espoused the Virgin Mary, begat Jesus, who 
is called Christ.’’ In other words, in this our ulti- 
mate appeal, so far as manuscripts are con- 
cerned, we have it explicitly stated that Joseph 
begat Jesus (as Jacob begat Joseph), thus testi- 
fying to the belief in the human paternity of 
Jesus. 

Thus we have seen that Jesus, Mary his 
mother, Paul, the triple tradition, the Gospel of 
Mark, the Fourth Gospel, Clement, Polycarp, 
Ignatius, make no mention of a miraculous birth 
of Jesus. Only two of the eleven leading in- 
formants in the first century and a half of our 
era report a virgin birth story—the authors of 
the First and Third Gospels. And in view of 
the facts mentioned above, the New Testament 
scholars infer that the chapters containing the 
birth stories in Matthew and Luke were incor- 
porated in these manuscripts about the middle of 
the second century. So much for the historical 
basis of the idea of a miraculous birth upon which 
all the fundamentalist preachers and writers lay 
such stress. | 

Or, if you take Jesus’ own consciousness as it 
is revealed in the synoptic Gospels, there is no 

126 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


place left for the doctrine that “Jesus is God.” 
He said, “Why call ye me good? There is none 
good save one, that is God.” Again he said, 
“The Father is greater than I’; and it was this 
consciousness that led him to pray, again and 
again, to his Father in secret. He disclaimed 
omniscience explicitly, and there is more than 
one passage recording surprise on his part, im- 
possible to predicate of God. There is nothing 
he claimed for himself that he did not claim for 
all men. If he was called ‘“‘the Son of God,” he 
called men “the children of God.” He said, “I 
am the light of the world,” but he also said “Ye 
are the light of the world.” If he performed 
works of healing, he declared “Greater works 
than these shall ye do because I go unto my 
Father.” And in that last prayer for his dis- 
ciples he prayed “That ye all may be one, even as 
I and my Father are one,” that is to say, he be- 
lieved that all men might achieve the same kind 
of unity with God and with one another that he 
felt he had achieved. If “Jesus was God,” then, 
there is no escaping the conclusion that he be- 
lieved that all men could become God, for he cer- 
tainly taught that all men might become like him, 
and live his kind of a life. 

But if the modern critical study of the New 

127 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Testament has disproved the historical basis for 
the literalness of the birth stories, modern science 
has made it impossible for intelligent minds to 
accept any such conception as that of a miracu- 
lous birth. Suppose Jesus, or anyone of equal 
moral and spiritual greatness, were to appear 
today, do you imagine for a moment that an age 
like ours would attempt to explain the unique 
greatness of such a life by a miraculous birth? 
Since the times that saw the rise of these birth 
stories, science has ushered man into a new and 
practically infinite universe which man knows to 
be under the reign of laws throughout, and laws 
which are not broken at the arbitrary whim or 
caprice even of God. If it were possible for 
these fundamental laws of the universe and of 
life to be broken, even in a single instance, there 
would be no basis for the stability of the universe, 
no ground for any science, no possible founda- 
tion for truth. It is safe to assume that even 
the fundamentalists do not credit the miraculous 
birth stories by means of which the ancients in all 
‘lands explained their heroes; why then should 
they make an exception in the case of Jesus, when 
we know that these stories about Jesus grew out 
of the same idealizing tendencies of a _ pre- 
scientific age that have produced all such stories? 
128 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


The laws that govern human procreation are 
as sacred, as fixed and as inevitable as are the 
laws that govern the movements of the heavenly 
bodies. They cannot be broken or suspended 
any more than can the laws of physics or chem- 
istry. So wonderful and universal is the fact of 
sex, and so increasingly pronounced does it be- 
come the higher we ascend in the scale of animal 
life, that we are compelled to regard it as an or- 
dained condition of being. I do not imagine that 
the authors of the birth stories about Jesus 
realized that, while their birth stories seemed to 
do honor to Jesus, at the same time they cast a 
slur on all parenthood as we know it. Yet, for 
us in the modern world, there can be no other 
view. To think a virgin birth “holier” than that 
which is ordained as a law of being, as a condition 
of existence, is to malign both fatherhood and 
motherhood, and to degrade what, as parents, we 
all know to be the holiest as well as the most mys- 
terious experience of human life. ‘To one who 
knows what science means and all that the idea of 
the reign of law involves, it is utterly impossible 
today to accept these stories literally without do- 
ing violence to one’s own mental integrity. 

But it is modern religious philosophy as well 
as Biblical scholarship and science that preclude 

129 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION . 


thoughtful minds of today from accepting the 
historicity of these stories. According to the pre- 
vailing ideas of the creed-making period of 
Christianity, the universe was a very limited af- 
fair. The earth, upon which man dwelt, was flat 
and stationary; a short distance above the earth 
was heaven where God reigned, surrounded by 
his angels; and hell was a cavelike structure 
somewhere in the bowels of the earth. God was 
a kind of magnified individual, localized some- 
where in space above the earth. God was essen- 
tially different from man. True, in the begin- 
ning He made man in His image, but in the sin 
of Adam the whole race had fallen under the 
wrath of God, and since then had continued its 
existence totally depraved and hopelessly cor- 
rupt. The only way in which God could reach 
the earth was to stoop down, as it were, from His 
heaven above and arbitrarily take some part in 
human affairs. ‘The only way in which He could 
get into the lives of human beings who had be- 
come thus hopelessly separated from Him was 
by breaking or suspending the laws of human 
procreation—laws which presumably He had 
Himself made,—and thus enter into human life 
by a “miraculous birth.” This He had done in 
the birth of Jesus; and henceforth Jesus was 
130 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


God in human form, and the only true manifesta- 
tion of God in the life of men. 

It is needless to say that all such conceptions 
are utterly childish and forever gone from in- 
telligent minds, and yet they form the back- 
ground out of which came the interpretations of 
Jesus that seem so vital to the religious conserva- 
tive of today. We know today that the universe 
is infinite, that Heaven and Hell are not places 
in space, but conditions in spirit, that God is not 
an individual localized somewhere in space, but 
everywhere present, the thrilling, throbbing, im- 
manent life of the universe, that God and man 
are not separated, but “closer is He than breath- 
ing, nearer than hands and feet,” and that, there- 
fore, every birth is a “divine” birth and every 
babe a “holy” child. Whatever else may be in- 
volved in the modern thought of God, it as- 
suredly contains the great idea, which is as old 
as it is new, of the immanency of God, as the 
creative life “that rolls through all things,” that 
wells up in every human being as consciousness, 
and that finds its truest and fullest expression in 
the spiritual aspiration and the moral endeavor 
of every soul. 

In the ages that gave birth to the historic 
creeds, the problem of Jesus was primarily a 

131 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


theological problem growing out of pre-scientific 
notions of the universe and of human life. The 
_ questions that were then fiercely discussed dealt 
with “‘the substance” of the Divine nature, the 
metaphysical relation of Jesus to God, on the 
one hand, and to the Holy Spirit on the other, 
of how Jesus could be truly God and at the same 
time truly man, of how the two natures could 
exist in the same being, etc., etc. Today all these 
metaphysical questions have faded into the back- 
ground; they have lost all interest and meaning 
for the modern man. The problem of Jesus in 
this age is primarily a psychological problem, for 
the theological Christ has given way at last to the 
human Jesus whom we never tire of contemplat- 
ing. The problem of Jesus in the realm of the 
moral and spiritual life is identical with the prob- 
lem of Shakespeare in the realm of poetry, or 
that of Abraham Lincoln in American life. We 
can no more “explain” one than the other. No 
ancestry or training can account for such lives. 
They simply are; and not even our latest psy- 
chology can account for their transcendent great- 
ness. As Dr. Grant has well said, ““What has 
the birth of Jesus to do with Christianity?’ What 
difference does it make how or when or where 
&man is born? It is what he is in himself, what . 

132 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


he becomes, and what he does that really counts. 
If Jesus had not been, in character, what he was, 
would any virgin birth have made him “divine’’? 
How long will bishops and theologians continue 
to quarrel over how he was born when the only 
question of importance is whether his character, 
his spirit and his message have any vital meaning 
for men today? 

As a matter of historic fact, this present theo- 
logical controversy quite reverses the original in- 
terest of the Apostles’ Creed. ‘This venerable 
document of the second century was born in con- 
troversy. Its major interest was to assert some- 
thing which the orthodox in their discussions 
today seem likely quite to ignore—the perfect 
humanity of Jesus. In the long discussions on 
the person of Jesus which came after the formu- 
lation of this creed, there were few who could 
say flatly, “Jesus was God,” and these few were 
counted as heretics. ‘Theirs was the heresy of 
Apollinarianism. Most of the extremely ortho- 
dox at present, even including the Bishop of the 
New York Diocese, would have been excluded 
from the church of the fourth century for hold- 
ing this heresy. 

I know there are many 1n all the churches who 
say, and quite honestly, “If we give up the theo- 

133 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


logical Christ there is nothing left, for then 
Jesus is nothing but a man.” “Only a man,” they 
say, and the very tone in which they utter the 
words betray the low opinion they have of hu- 
man nature. “If Jesus was not God,” they say, 
“then he was only human, and his life is shorn of 
all meaning and his message of all power.” But 
does this necessarily follow? Let us see. What 
do we mean by the words, “human” and “di- 
vine’? Are the terms mutually exclusive? Our 
newest psychology is revealing mysterious 
depths of powers and potentialities within hu- 
man nature of which we have not hitherto ~ 
dreamed. Is there anyone today who would 
dare to set limits to the possibilities of human 
nature, both for good and for evil? Who knows 
how low it can sink, or how high it can rise? 
Much as we have learned about ourselves, is not 
the mystery of human nature still unfathomable? 

What do we mean by “the divine’? The 
ereed-makers of the past thought they knew very 
definitely. To them, “the Divine” defined “the 
First Cause,” or “the Absolute,” or “the Infi- 
nite”; and this “Divine,” by whatever name it 
was called, consisted of a “‘substance”’ that was 
essentially different in kind from the “substance” 
_ that made up human nature. But these meta- 
134 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


physical conceptions of the past have no place 
in the philosophical thinking of our times. ‘The 
whole tendency today is to construe “the Divine” 
in moral and spiritual terms rather than in meta- 
physical terms. Formerly men approached the 
thought of God through Nature, but now the 
true approach to God lies through man himself, 
and especially through that which is highest and 
most distinctive in man—his moral nature and 
his spiritual aspiration. We can still talk about 
God, if we choose, in terms of “First Cause,” 
“the Absolute,” or “the Infinite,” but we recog- 
nize that all this lies in the realm of speculation, 
not of knowledge. The God that we know is the 
God of the moral life, who is revealed to us in 
moral ideals, and who finds expression through 
our moral endeavor. And this God, whatever 
else He may be, is not something or some One 
apart from human nature, but He is a very part 
of human nature, the “Divine” in human nature 
at its highest and best. 

It is not enough, therefore, to say of anyone, 
“he is only aman.” The real question is, “What 
kind of a man is he?” There are men and men; 
those who represent the zenith of manhood’s pos- 
sibilities, and those who stand at its nadir. “Only 
aman, ’—but we must take each man at his real 

135 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


value. There are men who sink so low as to make 
us despise our common human nature, and there 
are other men whose manhood towers up so high 
as to touch the Divine and make us conscious of 
God whenever we think of them. It is the 
heights of moral character which they have 
reached, it is the spirit that is expressed through 
them that makes us feel that in such lives we see 
a revelation of the God of the moral ideal. In 
man’s moral nature we see the “divine spark” 
that Carlyle declared was in every man; and 
when we find that nature developed into a strong 
and beautiful symmetry of manhood or woman- 
hood, we feel ourselves instinctively in the pres- 
ence of the Divinest we can know. 

In one of his novels, Hall Caine describes the 
gambling hells and drinking dens of London, 
where so-called men, like harpies, are preying 
on their kind, luring the youth of both sexes to 
destruction of body and soul, and doing it for 
selfish gain. “Only a man,” but a man who does 
that is a devilish man. ‘There was another kind 
of man. Hugh Price Hughes, who night after 
night entered these dens of infamy and, by the 
_ sheer force of his unselfish personality, drew out 
of these sinks of iniquity, sometimes a man, 
sometimes a woman, and gave them back their 

136 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


manhood and womanhood and ‘turned their faces 
again towards sobriety and purity and the life of 
usefulness. When he died, thousands followed 
him to his tomb, and when the service was over 
and the crowd had dispersed, there was one poor 
woman who asked permission to lay a bunch of 
violets on his coffin. He was “only a man,” but 
to her he was a man of men, for he had saved her 
from a fate worse than death. 

Or, compare the Earl of Shaftesbury, who de- 
voted his life and his fortune to bettering the lot 
of the factory workers in England, with those 
factory owners, who, for the sake of private gain 
were content that their workers should starve and 
die in ignorance and filth. When he came to die, 
the great Ear] declared that he could not bear to 
go out of the world and leave so much suffering 
and misery behind. “Only a man,” but the dif- 
ference between the Earl of Shaftesbury and 
those against whose merciless greed he struggled 
for years, was well-nigh infinite. 

Poor indeed, in its sense of moral values and 
in its spiritual perception, is that age or that indi- 
vidual that can no longer appreciate the great- 
ness of Jesus because he has ceased to be the 
mythical figure of the theologies of the past. 
Does anyone really question that if Dr. Grant 

137 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and Dr. Fosdick have indeed abandoned the theo- 
logical Christ, they have not, in so doing, recov- 
ered the real human Jesus. “Only a man,” but 
what kind of a man was Jesus? Let us recall the 
simple facts. 

Gradually, through long centuries of suffering, 
there had grown up among the Hebrew people 
the expectation of a Messiah, some one who 
should be born as a descendant of David, who 
was to come and rule the world and set them on 
high among the peoples of the earth. But this 
kingdom as it was to be held by them was an 
earthly kingdom. They did not put it afar off in 
the skies. It was to be here among men. Its 
capital was to be Jerusalem, which was to them 
the center of the world. But he did not come. 

In the period just preceding the birth of Jesus 
the ‘air was full of expectation. ‘There were 
Christs many, for “Christ,” as you know, is only 
the Greek form of the Hebrew “Messiah,” and 
so anticipation was rife, and men were looking 
for his coming on every hand. Then at length 
came the gentle Nazarene who did not claim to 
be the Messiah. He was born of the Jewish 
race. He was saturated in the history and the 
religion of his people, and especially in the writ- 
ings of the great Hebrew prophets. Through 

138 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


long years, we are told, he grew and developed 
naturally and normally in physical stature, in 
his mental powers and in spiritual perception. 
And at last he appeared before the people as a 
teacher. 

He did claim to teach a reform in the national 
religion, not by destroying Moses and the 
prophets, but by reinterpreting and thus “ful- 
filling” their earlier teachings. He did claim to 
speak for the universal Fatherhood of God and 
the universal brotherhood of man. He never 
tired of telling of God’s willingness and earnest 
desire to forgive and fold to His loving heart all 
His erring, wandering children of the world. He 
looked deep into his own soul and he dared to be- 
lieve that he found something of God there. He 
looked deep into the lives of others and dared to 
believe that he also found something of the same 
God in every human life. And so he reverenced 
all human beings, and he loved all men and 
women and little children, for he saw in all the 
same essential life that he found in himself. Out 
of his faith in human nature and his love for men 
grew his wondrous dream of the Kingdom of 
God on earth, when human brotherhood should 
become indeed a reality, and justice and love 
should reign supreme. And as time went on he 

139 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


talked more continually of “the new heavens and 
new earth” that should one day replace the wars. 
and strife, the greed and selfishness, the cruelty 
and injustice that then filled the world of men. 
He did not ask men to accept any creed or to 
join any church, but he did teach that love for 
God and love for man was the one cure for all the 
evils of the world, and that only as men learned 
the supreme lesson of love, and discovered how to 
translate love into all the relations of daily life, 
could the Kingdom of God ever be realized upon 
the earth. This was the life-work of Jesus. 

But, as in the case of Abraham Lincoln and 
all truly great men, his contemporaries did not 
understand him; even the common people were 
not ready for him. And when he spoke against 
making the Temple “a den of thieves,” when he 
touched the self-love and pride of the popular 
party, when he discredited all the elaborate sys- 
tem of sacrifices, when he said that the poor pub- 
lican who truly repented of his sin was better 
than the most punctilious pharisee who kept the 
letter of the law but knew nothing of its spirit, 
then he cut across all their cherished prejudices, 
and they would have none of hm. And when 
they came really to understand that he cared 

140 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


nothing for all their extensive ritualistic worship 
at the Temple, and when they saw that “the 
common people heard him gladly,” and that the 
crowds that followed him were steadily increas- 
ing in numbers and enthusiasm, and that there 
might be complications with the dominant reli- 
gious party as well as with the power of Rome, 
then they cried out, “Away with him; crucify 
him!” And one day, one of the darkest days of 
all human history, they took this man, so gentle 
and yet so strong, so true and so loving, and they 
led him along the via Dolorosa to the little hill 
beyond the city walls, and there they crucified 
him between two thieves. This was his life; and 
his death was the fate shared by all great 
prophets. 3 

“Only a man,” but, what a man! Superficial 
indeed is that shallow criticism which fancies it 
has revealed the total truth about these birth 
stories of Jesus when it has stigmatized them as 
“the worthless product of an age steeped in su- 
perstition.” Far from discarding them as worth- 
less myths, the thoughtful man will treasure 
them among the supreme proofs preserved to us 
of the moral and spiritual greatness of Jesus, 
and of the reverence and love which that great- 

141 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ness called forth in the hearts of his contempo- 
raries and biographers? Had Jesus been a man 
of smaller mould, no such birth stories would ever 
have been written of him. Wonder-tales are. 
never told of commonplace people. It was be- 
cause Jesus transcended the limits of ordinary, 
average human nature that there grew up around 
his personality, naturally, in that pre-scientific 
age, the significant legends of the Gospels and 
the “Apocrypha.” Thus, these birth stories, 
while not at all the historical record of his origin, 
are yet the spontaneous products of the influence 
exerted by his own great and singularly unique 
life. They are not histories of fact, but symbols 
of the quality of his person. They are poetic 
expressions of the popular faith that, being so 
unusual a character, Jesus must have been born 
in an unusual way. They represent that “truth 
of poetry” which, as Aristotle taught, is more 
than the truth of history. 

When the creed-making centuries came, we 
can understand today why, in trying to philoso- 
phize about the person of Jesus and explain his 
unique greatness, they employed the theological 
expressions and phrases that finally found their 
way into the historic creeds. The language that 

142 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


seems to us so strange, and perhaps quite mean- 
ingless, was all there, ready made, with which to 
interpret this great life. The creed-makers 
turned naturally to the Jewish categories of 
thought that lay nearest at hand, or to the terms 
of Greek philosophy, or the teachings of Philo of 
Alexandria with which they were familiar, and 
attempted to define this life of Jesus in terms 
of these familiar categories. What were some of 
these familiar forms of thought? “The Christ” 
(or the Messiah), “the Son,” “the only begotten 
Son,” “the image of the invisible God,” “the 
first-born of every creature,” “the Logos” (or 
the Word). ‘These and many others were the 
thought-forms in which the writers of the New 
Testament clothed the personality of Jesus. 
They were already there, waiting their use. 
Judaism was full of them and, still later, Greek 
philosophy furnished many more. They all rep- 
resent a sincere attempt to interpret and explain 
the life and character of Jesus in terms of 
thought, perfectly familiar to the people of that 
time, but which man’s thinking has long since out- 
grown. 

But, just as in the case of the birth stories, the 
understanding mind today recognizes in these 

143 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


old thought forms of the creeds the symbols of 
spiritual realities. He does not believe them 
literally, but he accepts them as poetry that re- 
veals its own truth in its own way. And beneath 
the form of the story or the statement of the 
creed he sees the imperishable truth of the moral 
and spiritual greatness of the life and spirit of 
Jesus who lived our human life at its highest and 
best, and whose influence for good in the world 
is eternal. 

The metaphysical arguments about the nature 
of the Godhead are not nearly so important as 
liberal controversialists and orthodox theologians 
have insisted, and they have arisen out of con- 
ceptions of God and of man that are no longer 
held by persons who have had the discipline of a 
thorough course of philosophy. ‘The really im- 
portant question of theology is, after all, not 
what shall we think of Jesus’ relation to God, but 
rather, what meaning do the life and teachings of 
Jesus possess for us today? If the fundamen- 
talists would only center their attention upon this, 
instead of upon the virgin birth, there would be 
more hope for organized religion. 

Let us never forget that if Jesus has become 
to us “only a man,” he is, nevertheless, the man 
of men, in whose universal spirit of love and in 

144 


WAS JESUS ONLY A MAN? 


whose ideals of righteousness lies the world’s only 
hope. 


“Was Christ a man like us? 
Ah, let us try if we then too, can be such men as he.” 


145 


VI 


HAS JESUS ANY MESSAGE FOR TODAY ? 







Pgs aN EK. of the distinct achievements of the 
(ey historical scholarship of the last sev- 
A J enty-five years has been the new light 
ea it has thrown on the origins of Chris- 
tianity. When David Friedrich Strauss first 
published his Leben Jesw in 1835, the Christian 
world was shocked not so much by the author’s 
conclusions as to the legendary character of much 
of the material found in the Gospels as by the 
fact that he dared to apply the canons of his- 
torical criticism to the New Testament, and 
especially, to that part of it dealing with the life 
of Jesus. It was believed at that time that the 
Biblical literature was “‘sacred,”’ and that no one 
had the right to subject it to the same standards 
of historical and literary criticism that were ap- 
plied to other ancient documents. 

Once begun, however, the scientific study of 
both Old and New Testaments has gone steadily 
on, and from the time of Strauss until today 
146 















JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


there has been a constant stream of books coming 
from the press in all countries, dealing in a more © 
or less thorough-going scientific spirit with the 
life and times of Jesus. If this critical historical 
study of the Gospels has tended to weaken the 
old dogmas about Jesus, as it most assuredly 
has for all thoughtful minds, it has certainly made 
more real and luminous the personality and teach- 
ings of Jesus as they stand out against the back- 
ground of the times in which he lived. 

From being the second person of the Trinity, 
the Son of God by virtue of a Virgin Birth, or 
the majestic figure now seated at the right hand 
of God on his throne in the heavens, Jesus has 
become, thanks to historical criticism, a living, 
breathing human personality in whom dwelt a 
spirit so pure, so lofty, so disinterested and uni- 
versal that all men today are proud to do him 
reverence. ‘The theological Christ, who was fast 
becoming a mere phantom to intelligent minds, 
has become the historical Jesus at whose feet 
we are still glad to sit as humble learners. 

We see him today as he really was,—born of 
the Jewish race in an age of peculiar turbulence 
and violence, facing with his own people certain 
very definite and concrete problems, and later on, 
adopted by Christianity as its Divine Saviour,— 

. 147 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and yet towering so far above the provincial ex- 
clusiveness of the Jew and the dogmatic and 
narrow sectarianism of the Christian that we are 
not content to call him either Jew or Christian, 
but can think of him only in terms of the uni- 
versal man whose insight went down to the deeps 
of human nature and whose sympathies were as 
broad as all humanity. 

Let us admit frankly that Jesus never claimed 
to have spoken the last word either in morals or 
religion. “I have many things to tell you but 
ye cannot bear them now,” and again, “When 
I am gone from you the Spirit of Truth will 
come, and He will be continually leading you into 
all the truth.” Let us admit also that in some 
particulars he shared the intellectual limitations 
of his age and partook of the ignorance of his 
fellows. We also know that there are many 
moral problems and innumerable social condi- 
tions which confront us today about which he 
knew nothing, since they did not exist in his 
time. We can also admit with Mary Austin, in 
her recent article in The Century, that he left no 
detailed instructions as to the technique or 
method by which his lofty principles were to be 
applied to our complex political, social and eco- 
nomic problems of today. 

148 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


But in spite of all these admissions, which 
modern historical scholarship has proven justi- 
fied, the question that I want to consider now 
is, Whether Jesus, regarded not from the view- 
point of the churches or creeds but simply as an 
historical character who stands among the fore- 
‘most of the world’s great moral and spiritual 
teachers, has any real message for us today? In 
attempting to answer this question, I am not 
thinking of those many specific teachings which 
have come down to us from Jesus, some of them 
original with him and some that had found ex- 
pression long before him, that we all of us know 
to be true,—true not because Jesus taught them, 
but intrinsically and universally true. What I 
am seeking to do in this connection is to get back 
of all that is obvious and self-evident in his teach- 
ings to that which was fundamental in his mes- 
sage, or to that which constituted the source from 
which all the other teachings naturally and log- 
ically flowed forth. 

All the scholars are agreed today that the 
teachings of Jesus revolved chiefly around one 
central point,—the Kingdom of Heaven or the 
Kingdom of God. From the beginning of his 
public ministry to its close these words were most 
~ frequently on his lips. Whether dealing in ab- 
149 | 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


stract statements, or employing his favorite par- 
able form of illustration, the Kingdom of Heaven 
was his constant theme. But why did he use this 
phrase so constantly? What were the influences 
that made it the central theme of all his teach- 
ings? And, especially, what did it mean to him, 
what content did he put into these words? 
While there have been many volumes written 
in recent years that have dealt with these ques- 
tions, there is one little book that came from the 
press last spring that seems to me especially il- 
luminating, and that to my mind throws a flood 
of new light on the central message of Jesus. It 
is entitled: “Toward the Understanding of 
Jesus,” and its author is Vladimir G. Simkho- 
vitch, Professor of Economic History in Colum- 
bia University. The author’s approach to his sub- 
ject is purely the historical one. He is not 
interested in how the Greeks or the Romans, the 
peoples of the Middle Ages or the Anglo-Saxons 
have at various times conceived or pictured to 
themselves Jesus and his teachings. This is an 
interesting problem in itself; it gives us the his- 
tory of Christianity. But these interpretations 
are only confusing in our quest for the historical 
Jesus, and what the author is seeking is that 
150 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


definite, concrete, historical Jesus who can give 
coherence to his teachings. 

It is only possible, with the limits of space, to 
give the briefest summary of the vivid picture 
drawn by the author of the age in which Jesus 
lived. In the year 70 A.D. the temple of Jeru- 
salem was destroyed, the city itself was sacked, 
and the population either slain, crucified or 
sold into slavery. It is estimated that over a 
million and two hundred thousand perished. The 
conventional history usually states that the war 
between the Jews and the Romans that culmi- 
nated in the year 70 in the complete destruction 
of Jerusalem began in the year 66, when the 
Romans and other Gentiles were massacred by 
the Jews of Jerusalem. This date is so artificial 
that Mommsen, the historian, suggests A.D. 44 
as the year from which the Jewish-Roman war 
might better be dated. But our author points 
out that this earlier date is also artificial, for the 
revolt of the Jews had long been brewing and 
had repeatedly broken out here and there long 
before that time. 

If we should follow the opinion of a contem- 
porary historian, Josephus, we should have to 
date the beginnings back to the revolt of Judas, 
the Gaulonite, to whose revolutionary activities 

151 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and doctrines Josephus attributes all the ensuing 
misfortunes of the Jewish nation. The occasion 
of that uprising was the census of Quirinius for 
taxation purposes in the year A.D. 6. Josephus 
tells us that one Judas, the Gaulonite together 
with a Pharisee named Saddouk, urged the Jews 
to revolt, both preaching that “this taxation was 
no better than an introduction to slavery, and 
exhorting the nation to assert its liberty.” 

But as our author makes clear, the Jewish 
struggle for independence and the Zealot move- 
ment did not begin even with Judas in 6 A.D. 
Judas himself only continued the work of his 
father, Ezechias who, with his very large follow- 
ing, was killed by young Herod in the year 46 
B.C. Nor does the rebellion of the Jews begin 
with Ezechias. The rebellion of the Jews against 
Rome rather begins with the power of Rome 
over the Jews; it can easily be traced back for 
decades prior to the beginning of the Christian 
era; and in the same degree that the Roman 
power over the Jews increased did the political 
reaction against that power, the revolution 
against Rome, increase and spread. 

The out-and-out Jewish revolutionaries were 
called by the Romans, bandits or robbers; they 
were known among the Jews as the Zealots. But 

152 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


it is clear from Josephus that they were in no 
sense mercenary bandits, but political and re- 
ligious devotees who preferred death to submis- 
sion. It is also clear that the Zealot movement 
was much older than the revolt of Judas, the 
Gaulonite. The Pharisees were in sympathy 
with the spirit of revolt that actuated the Zealots, 
only for prudential reasons they did not un- 
sheathe the sword or take an open part in the 
rebellion, whenever it broke out, but they nursed 
their resentment and bitterness in their hearts. 

In the year 6 A.D. Judea was annexed to 
Syria, and it is interesting to note that the Jews 
themselves petitioned Rome to grant this annex- 
ation. But why? Where, then, was Jewish pa- 
triotism, where the exclusive nationalism, clothed 
in all-consuming religious fervor? The answer 
of history is simple. The reason they preferred 
to give up their nominal political independence 
under the Herod dynasty and accept the rule 
of the Roman procurator of Syria was because 
they came to see that the issue was drawn be- 
tween so-called political independence and their 
cultural life, especially their religion. As be- 
tween the two, their religion was the last thing 
to be surrendered. It was in reality a phase of 
the nationalistic struggle, although it took the 

153 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


curious form of a petition for annexation to 
Syria. If they should be managed by the Roman 
procurator of Syria, they still clung to the des- 
perate hope of complete cultural autonomy and 
the right to manage their own local affairs. 
Ruled by a Herodian prince, they realized that 
they were quite helpless to do so; for the Hero- 
dians, while nominally Jews, were striving hard 
to be culturally Romans. Their petition for an- 
nexation was, therefore, to be an exchange of 
their sham political independence for what they 
hoped would be real cultural autonomy. In 
other words, complete independence looked to 
the more enlightened part of the population like 
a forlorn hope; and the struggle was waged for 
home rule that would not infringe upon religious 
traditions. 

We can now, perhaps, realize in its main out- 
lines the situation that confronted Jesus. Be- 
tween the time of the annexation of Judea to 
Syria in the year 6 and the utter destruction of 
Jerusalem and its temple in the year 70, Jesus. 
lived his life, delivered his message and was cruci- 
fied on Golgotha. During the hundred years and 
more prior to the beginning of the Christian 
era the Jews had been struggling more and more 
intensely against the Hellenistic tendencies that 

154 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


threatened to destroy their own cultural life and 
weaken their religion. ‘These tendencies were 
somewhat checked by the nationalistic and re- 
ligious revolt of the Maccabeans; but they re- 
vived again under the Hasmonean dynasty. And 
now that the little Jewish Kingdom was becom- 
ing more and more a dependency of Rome two 
tendencies were rapidly developing; that of sub- 
mission to Rome and cultural assimilation, and 
that of growing nationalism and religious ortho- 
doxy. Romanization now threatened the very 
life of their traditions as Hellenization had for- 
merly done. It was taking away their political 
independence, but still more seriously, it was 
interfering with their religion. 

It is clear that during the entire period that 
Jesus lived, the life of the little nation was a 
terrific drama; its patriotic emotions were 
aroused to the highest pitch, and then still more 
inflamed by the identification of national politics 
with a national religion. The situation was not 
at all unlike that which existed in Ireland during 
the years following the Great War; it bears a 
close resemblance to conditions in India today. 

Is it reasonable to assume that what was going 
on before the very eyes of Jesus was a closed 
book to him, that the agonizing problems of his 

155 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


people were matters of indifference to him or 
that he had given them no serious consideration? 
Must we not rather conclude, in this age fairly 
seething with the intensest sort of nationalism 
inflamed with religion, when the people were 
thinking constantly of but one problem,—that of 
their national existence, and when this one prob- 
lem was the daily theme of conversation, that 
Jesus in his earlier years of preparation was 
taking a definite attitude towards the very people 
that later on he was to teach? 
After the annexation to Syria it steadily be- 
came clearer that Rome was establishing herself 
ever more frankly and firmly as Judea’s avowed 
lord, with the natural result that the increased 
national feeling and the bitter national antago- 
nism of the Jews became equally frank and ag- 
gressive. ‘The religion of their forefathers be- 
came the unfurled banner of a nation at bay. 
From now on, whether in passive resistance or 
in open rebellion, the only lord and master they 
recognized was the Lord of Hosts, the God of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with whom they 
believed they had a sacred covenant, and who 
must speedily send the great Deliverer, whom 
their prophets had foretold, to save his people 
in their hour of direst need. 
156 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


As time went on, greater and more tragic be- 
came the pressure; greater and more imperative 
became the need. From every heart went forth 
the cry: Where was the Messiah? Would he 
come in the future? But there was no longer 
any future; it was then and there that he must 
come; the danger was imminent; the hour was 
now. Yea, if his people were to be saved, he 
must have come already, must be among them 
then, only unrecognized as yet,—the promised 
and long-hoped-for Messiah, the anointed of 
God, the Christ. 

Need we longer ask the question under what 
influences Jesus developed, or what problems 
absorbed him before he began his ministry? The 
central problem of his people was so enveloping, 
so all-absorbing, that we are forced to take for 
granted that Jesus’ religious and intellectual life 
revolved around it, and that his own mental and 
spiritual development consisted in the gradual 
solution of this very problem. 

The idea of a coming Messiah who should save 
his people had long been familiar to the Jews. 
A century or so before Jesus Messianic qualities 
had been attributed to the Maccabean leaders; a 
century after Jesus the last great rebel leader, 
Bar-Kochbah, was viewed as the Messiah. So it 

157 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


was not strange that when this new teacher ap- 
peared, speaking on his own authority, so des- 
perate was the external situation, so desperate 
the inner pain of earnest souls searching for a 
way out, that many of the people looked upon 
him as the promised Messiah, the great Deliverer 
that should come. 

Even a superficial glance at Jesus’ life shows 
us the imminence of the great disaster that cul- 
minated in 70, and how concretely Jesus’ life 
was bound up with the political destiny of Judea. 
For was not Jesus born in the days of the tax- 
enrollment? Did not the same enrollment start 
the rebellion of Judas the Gaulonite? And did 
the battle-cry of Judas, “No Tribute to the 
Romans,” ever die out in Jesus’ lifetime? We 
know that multitudes followed Jesus, and that 
“the common people heard him gladly.” Can 
we possibly assume that his message was in no 
wise related to the paramount burning interest 
of the people? What did he mean when he re- 
iterated that he was sent to save the lost sheep 
of the House of Israel? What did his followers 
have in mind when they perceived in him their 
Saviour, their Messiah? What did the people 
of that time expect from their Messiah except 
their national salvation? What that national sal- 

158 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


vation meant was clear enough. Luke states it: 
“That we should be saved from our enemies and 
from the hand of all that hate us.” Read again 
the Gospels and see how luminous become many 
hitherto obscure passages in the light of this 
historical situation which Professor Simkhovitch 
describes. Many passages which the theologians 
have classed as eschatological, that is, as having 
reference to the end of the world, are clearly 
_ intended to refer to the impending disaster at 
the hands of the Romans, the inevitable end of 
the tragedy toward which, most obviously, the 
children of Israel were so rapidly tending. 

The supreme problem, then, which Jesus was 
called upon to face, and to solve, was the su- 
preme and desperately pressing problem of his 
people,—that of preserving their national exist- 
ence in the presence of their enemies. Jesus, 
lke Josephus and many others, saw the inevitable 
consequences of the Jewish rebellion. Many in- 
tellectuals probably foresaw and feared the out- 
come, but they felt powerless against the na- 
tional passion that was burning in the hearts of 
the mass of the people. 

Jesus, like Josephus and others, opposed re- 
sistance to Rome, though for very different rea- 
sons. ‘Those who favored non-resistance to Rome 

159 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


could be divided into two classes. One class wel- 
comed and aspired to the universal Roman civ- 
ilization. Complete assimilation, Greco-Roman 
culture was their ideal. Their attitude towards 
religion was, of course, purely formal. This class 
was neither numerous nor influential, but it un- 
doubtedly existed. The other type of non-resis- 
tant was both numerous and significant. ‘These 
were men who knew enough about the world at 
large to see clearly what resistance to Rome 
implied and foreboded. ‘They knew that resist- 
ance was a physical impossibility and only in- 
vited complete destruction and ruin. They did 
not love Rome because they could not fight; 
they hated her all the more. It was a prudent 
attitude, but sooner or later it was certain to be 
swept away by the tide of active resistance. | 

The solution of the problem which Jesus 
reached was the result of a unique insight which 
he gained in an inner struggle with himself, 
where alone true insight is always gained. I 
cannot escape the feeling that the story of the 
temptations of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels 
are really parables of alternatives, of political 
and religious choices which he faced in the depths 
of his own being. One solution can be expressed 
something like this: Here is the Holy City; here 

160 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


is the temple of God; and here are God’s chosen 
people. Can God allow them to perish? Most 
assuredly not. Hence even the war with the en- 
tire world, whose name is Rome, cannot but end 
with the victory of God and His people. Or, in 
the words of the Gospels: “Cast thyself down; 
for it is written, He shall give his angels charge 
concerning thee. ... Jesus said unto him,... 
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Thus 
Jesus could not accept the Zealot nationalist solu- 
tion that trusted the miraculous power of God to 
save in the face of certain defeat. 

There was an alternative in exactly the oppo- 
site direction: to let the Roman civilization super- 
sede Judaism. Let the Jews frankly accept 
Rome and its culture, let them become Romans; 
then, indeed, the entire world will be theirs. Or 
in the words of the Gospels: “Again the devil 
taketh him up into an exceedingly high moun- 
tain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the 
world .. . and saith unto him, All these things 
will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me. ‘Then Jesus saith unto him, Get thee hence, 
Satan.” ... Between these two extreme solutions 
were other alternatives, chief among them the 
one that had no higher aspiration than just to 
live, and to live by bread alone. This could have 

161 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


made no appeal to such as Jesus. Jesus had 
made his own discovery of the only solution he 
could accept, and this solution constituted the 
core of his message. 

His first words as a public teacher were these: 
“Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand.” It was his first use of the familiar phrase 
which was afterwards so often on his lips. He 
did not coin the phrase, the Kingdom of Heaven. 
It had long been in use among the Jews; it stood 
for their idea of a theocratic state; to the people 
of his own day it meant very definitely national 
independence and freedom from the hands of 
their enemies. When Jesus makes the Kingdom 
of Heaven his constant theme, therefore, he is 
adopting a phrase that carries a very concrete 
meaning to his hearers,—the fulfilment of their 
deepest hopes, their salvation as a separate na- 
tion. But for him, as we shall see presently, it 
had a very different meaning. The word trans- 
lated ‘““Repent”? comes from a Greek word that 
means “Change your minds” or “change your 
thinking,” a very different conception from that 
of our theological use of the word. 

Thus at the very beginning of his ministry, it 
was as if Jesus had said: “The Kingdom of 
Heaven of which you are constantly thinking and 

162 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


which you imagine I have come to establish 
through the overthrow of your enemies and the 
setting up of an independent theocratic state, is 
indeed at hand, but it is something so entirely 
different from what you conceive as to require 
nothing else than a complete and radical change 
in your thinking about life, about God, about 
yourselves and your fellows.” 

Later on he discloses his secret, he makes clear 
his insight, he gives them his solution of the 
supreme problem that absorbs their thought and 
inflames their passion. In Luke 17:20-21, he 
says, “The Kingdom of God cometh not with 
observation; Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, 
Lo there! for behold, the Kingdom of God is 
within you.” This is the secret of Jesus,—The 
Kingdom of Heaven isin us. It is not primarily 
an external thing, it is a thing of the inner life. 
It is not an independent political state, it has to 
do with a man’s attitude, his disposition, his 
understanding, his spirit. It does not mean low- 
ering of taxes, or freedom from paying duties on 
commodities, or release of prisoners, or any of 
these things for which you are clamoring; it is 
something that has to do, rather, with ideas 
and ideals; you are thinking only of things. It 
means, to be sure, the conquering of your ene- 

163 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


mies, but not by force or violence as you are 
planning. Your real enemy is not outside but 
within yourself; it consists in the spirit of hatred 
and bitterness and aggressive self-assertion that 
fills your lives. Conquer that spirit and you have 
already won the true victory. 

Think of the amazement with which these hot- 
headed and turbulent people must have listened 
to his words: “Ye have heard that it hath been 
said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine 
enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that 
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully 
use you and persecute you; That ye may be the 
children of your father which is in heaven; for 
He maketh his sun rise on the evil and the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” 
And these words, remember, were spoken when 
the enemy were at the gate, when they had the 
most direct application in the minds of his hearers 
to the Romans who were threatening their little 
nation with destruction. 

Turn to the Beatitudes that begin with bless- . 
ings upon the humble. “Blessed are the poor in 
spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” 
“Blessed are they that mourn (naturally one 
mourns the loss of one’s national independence) ; 

164 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


for they shall be comforted.” “Blessed are the 
meek; for they shall inherit the earth,” ete. 
Meekness, humility, hungering and thirsting af- 
ter righteousness, purity of heart, are all spiritual 
terms; and to inherit the earth means but a 
spiritual inheritance. And then in the passage 
immediately following: “Ye are the salt of the 
earth.” These words clearly are not addressed 
to the world at large, for then there would have 
been no earth left, only salt. 

It was as if he had said: “You believe that 
you are the chosen people, but for what were you 
chosen? Chosen to carry to the world a great 
moral and spiritual message. If you have no 
spiritual message for the world, what are you 
good for? In resorting to force and violence, 
you are but meeting your enemies on their own 
ground, you are employing their weapons, you 
are fighting fire with fire. And in the end you 
will surely be destroyed. If you could but realize 
it, you have at your disposal weapons of which 
your enemy knows nothing. In meeting force 
with the things of the spirit, you will be invincible. 
You are burning with national humiliation, but 
the only balm for that humiliation is humility 
of spirit; for humility is the one thing that can 
never be humiliated. You are aggressively seek- 

165 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ing your own, but through the spirit of meekness 
you can even now enter into possession of your 
own, which can never be taken from you. You 
are clamoring for revenge, but revenge is a two- 
edged sword which inevitably slays him who em- 
ploys it, and only by the spirit of forgiveness 
can you ever make your enemy your friend. 
Your souls are filled with hatred and bitterness 
against your oppressors, but I say unto you, 
Love your enemies, for your hatred is hurting 
you far more than it can injure them.” 

It was at this very point that the great cleavage 
took place between Jesus and the leaders of the 
people. The priests and the Pharisees could 
probably have overlooked the heresies in the re- 
ligious teachings of Jesus, but they could not 
accept his teachings of non-resistance to Rome. 
For this reason the time came inevitably when 
Jesus was delivered over to his enemies and the 
rebel leader Barabbas was released. ‘The 100 per 
cent patriots had won the day. They knew not 
what they were doing, nor did they realize that 
they were sealing the fate of their nation. To 
Jesus, however, it was quite clear, and that is 
why, when the women of Jerusalem followed him 
on the way to Golgotha, bewailing and lamenting 
him, he turned to them and said: “Weep not for 

166 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


me, but weep for yourselves and for your chil- 
dren.” | 
This is the secret of Jesus, this is the heart of 
his message, this reveals his insight that led to 
his unique solution of the problems that absorbed 
the people of his day. It was not the solution 
of the Zealots, nor of the Pharisees, nor of Jo- 
sephus. Historically considered, the problem 
was very local. Even from a religious point of 
view it was a provincial problem; and yet Jesus’ 
solution became the most universal achievement 
in the annals of all time. 
_ The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Simple 
as the words are, they are freighted with an 
eternal meaning. All the deepest thought of 
Jesus about God is focused in these words. He 
never seeks to define God or explain him in 
philosophical terms. To him, God is not seated 
on some lofty throne in the heavens. He is not 
outside but ever and always within the soul of 
every human being,—the highest we know, the 
deepest we feel, the best towards which we aspire, 
ever speaking to us through the voice of con- 
science, ever calling us to higher and better 
things. In these same words is focused also 
Jesus’ deepest thought of man. If the divine 
dwells in every human being, then every individ- 
167 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ual is inviolable, the human personality is sacred 
just because he is a moral being, with all the 
possibilities of moral growth and unfolding. 
And the great duty of life is to seek the enhance- 
ment and enrichment of personality, whoever it 
may be or wherever it may be found. 

The Kingdom of Heaven, then, is not some- 
thing foisted upon men from without; it grows 
up within man himself. It consists in the inner 
attitude and disposition and spirit of one’s life. 
I fully agree with those who believe that the 
Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus used the words, 
contained his dream of a more perfect society 
that should one day exist upon this earth. But 
I cannot escape the conviction that in his thought 
this more perfect society could only be realized 
in the world at large, as it first came to have its 
place in the inner lives of men, as they changed 
their thinking about God and life, about them- 
selves and others, and as this changed thinking 
led to such a complete and drastic change in their 
attitudes and understanding of moral and spir- - 
itual things that Jesus could liken it to nothing 
else than a literal re-birth of the spirit. 

If I am right in this interpretation of the 
central message of Jesus, has it any application 
to our life today? It seems scarcely necessary to 

168 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


enlarge on the answer in this connection. Eivery- 
where in the world today we find the fires of 
intense nationalism burning. The supreme vir- 
tue today is 100 per cent patriotism,—a _ patri- 
otism, alas, that too often means that I can love 
my country only by hating or belittling all other 
countries. The great nations are consumed by 
lust of power, dominated by greed and actuated 
by aggressive selfishness, and the smaller nations 
are all too prone to follow the example set them 
by the great. Everywhere fear, hatred, bitter- 
ness and prejudice are poisoning the lives of men 
and nations. The imperialistic powers are cling- 
ing desperately to the territories they have gov- 
erned in the past, and reaching forth more or less 
openly for fresh territories to exploit, while the 
weaker peoples of the earth are wondering in 
fear and trepidation when their turn will come 
to be mastered by strong and greedy powers. 
The situation presented today is closely akin to 
that which Jesus confronted in his own day, only 
now we see it on a world-wide scale. Then it 
was Jews and Romans; now it involves all of us. 

Those in every land who are earnestly working. 
for a better world are laying the emphasis on the 
need of a League of Nations or on a World 

169 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Court or on some plan to outlaw war or on some 
new organization or third party. All this is good 
and needed, but these things are only new ma- 
chinery after all, and in and of themselves will 
never redeem the world from its present woes. 
Herbert Adams Gibbons says, in his last book, 
“Europe Since 1918”: “The League of Nations 
is impotent, with or without the United States 
as a member, to restore Europe to peace, until 
the three Furies—Vanity, Greed and Revenge— 
cease raging.” 

Deeper than all.other needs is the need of a 
new and different spirit in the lives of men and 
nations. In spite of all the centuries that inter- 
vene, we need to rediscover the central truth of 
Jesus, that truth that had nothing to do with 
churches or rituals or creeds, but that stands forth 
today, thanks to historical scholarship, as the uni- 
versal and eternal truth for mankind. We need 
to hear once again the challenge of his great 
words: Change your thinking, for the Kingdom 
of Heaven is at hand. The old world of politics, 
of social and economic institutions, of morals and 
religion, is fast passing away. The ideas upon 
which that old world was builded have become ob- 
solete. They are no longer adequate to the new 

170 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


world that is coming into existence. We must 
begin to think differently about human relations. 

If Jesus were alive today would he not say to 
us, as in effect he said to the people of his own 
time: You must dare to think differently about 
everything. If you are honestly seeking a better 
world, in which war and strife are to be banished 
and more of justice and brotherliness shall come 
to have their place in human life, do not forget 
that this better world must begin in your own 
lives first of all, and then work out through you 
into all the manifold relations of life. It is for 
you to conquer all fear, to banish all hatred, to 
rise above all prejudice, to dispel all bitterness 
in your own hearts before you are fitted to help 
in the bringing in of the better world to men. 
If you would have all wars cease, then learn to 
love your enemies and to forgive those who hate 
you. Would you help in the removing of the 
deep-lying causes of war and strife, then see to 
it, by a rigid self-discipline, that you have re- 
moved from your own life every slightest ten- 
dency to injustice to even the smallest and weak- 
est. Would you work for the coming of human 
brotherhood, then live the life of brotherliness, 
and live it habitually and universally, shutting 
out no one from your sympathy and love. 

171 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION | 


The people of his own day did not understand 
Jesus’ message; they were not ready for it; they 
could not accept it. Those who followed him in 
spirit then, constituted only the “pitiable mi- 
nority.” It is not different today. There are 
millions of professed followers of Jesus, but how 
few who as yet have grasped his insight, how few 
who accept his way of life, how limited the num- 
ber who believe in his Kingdom of Heaven! To- 
day, as then, his followers are only “the pitiable 
minority.” Perhaps it will always be so. But 
however limited the number may be, it is those 
' who have found the Kingdom of Heaven within 
themselves, who have come to see it in all men, 
and who are seeking to translate the truths of 
that Kingdom into the more just and righteous 
society, that constitute the “salt of the earth” and 
“the light of the world.” 

The Kingdom of Heaven, the better world of 
which we dream, and for which we yearn, must 
begin within ourselves. This Kingdom primarily 
is a matter of attitude, of understanding, of in- 
sight and of spirit. But the Kingdom is also like 
a mustard seed, which is the tiniest of seeds, but 
which grows in time “so that the birds of the air 
come and lodge in the branches thereof.” 

172 


JESUS’ MESSAGE FOR TODAY 


And just so, after all, is human assimilation 
of all knowledge and all insight and all under- 
standing. It means the re-education of the mind. 
It involves the re-birth of the spirit. It is a 
matter of slow growth. 


173 


Vil 


IS THERE A PLACE FOR FAITH IN MODERN LIFE? 





soe 
Gay 
Vv 


(j 
NS 


> N a recent address before representa- 

Pe pa tives of the Missionary Societies of the 

<i various denominations of the country, 
=4| President Coolidge, in the course of 
his remarks, emphasized “the revival of religious 
faith” as the supreme need of today. It raises 
at once the whole question of what we mean by 
“faith; and what kind of faith, if any, is 
“needed” at this particular time? 

In this age of conflicting ideals, of religious 
scepticism and of wide-spread confusion of 
thought, this message of the President must have 
called forth inevitably very different responses 
from the people who read it. There is first of 
all the response of the fundamentalists in religion 
who have hailed this message with joy and who 
immediately proceed to interpret “the faith 
needed today” in terms of their own literalistic 
understanding of the doctrines of the creeds of 
their respective churches. “This,” they say, “‘is 

174 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


exactly what we have been preaching all along. 
The world is going to destruction through lack 
of faith, and unless faith can be ‘revived’ there 
is no hope for the future.” And it is clearly 
evident that to the fundamentalists, “‘faith’’ means 
a very definite and specific thing. ‘To them faith 
is belief in certain intellectual propositions that 
have come down to us from the far-away past 
in the form of religious dogmas; and to believe 
these dogmas means the intellectual acceptance 
of them just as they stand in the old creeds. This 
is the kind of faith needed today, as understood 
and as demanded by every fundamentalist pulpit 
throughout the country—the faith that is belief 
in the literal truth of old dogmas. 

Then there is the response of that large num- 
ber in our age who have frankly abandoned all 
forms of “faith” for what they call “science.” 
The President’s message finds all such quite in- 
different, or even awakens in the minds of many 
a feeling of open hostility. This class of people 
boasts of having attained the “modern” view- 
‘point. They remind us that we are living in a 
scientific age, that slowly but surely the steady 
advance of science during the last three hundred 
years has proved unmistakably that these old be- 
liefs of men are based not on facts but on credul- 

175 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ity; that, one by one, intelligent minds have been 
forced to abandon these earlier beliefs about the 
universe, about man and about religion, for the 
truth as revealed by science. They claim that to 
seek the “revival of faith” is nothing less than to 
seek the revival of ignorance and superstition, 
since all faith in the past has grown out of man’s 
ignorance and has led inevitably to superstition. 
And so they confidently proclaim their belief that 
the world has at last emerged from the “dark 
ages” of faith into the clear knowledge of sci- 
ence. Henceforth man is to live by sight and not 
by faith. It is not a revival of faith that is needed, 
but its decent burial, with all the other outgrown 
and obsolete things upon which man has de- 
pended in the past. 

But there is still a third response called forth 
from some minds by the President’s message, 
differing both from the fundamentalist and the 
so-called “modern.” These people are modern, 
too, in the sense that they gladly accept all the 
clear findings of science about the universe, man 
and life, and yet they recognize that science has 
not spoken the last word about many things, and 
in spite of all the new light of science, man still 
finds himself confronting mysteries which not 
even science has yet explained. They see most 

176 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


clearly that while science has indeed explained 
many things, this does not mean that it has ex- 
plained the facts away. What science does is to 
give us clearer and truer explanations, but the 
underlying facts themselves still remain as facts. 
For example, scientific physics has analyzed heat 
and explained it by reducing it to molecules. We 
accept the explanation, but we still know there 
is such a thing as heat, and we continue to use 
heat to warm our houses and prepare our food, 
in spite of the scientific explanation. In the same 
way science has explained the rise and develop- 
ment of religions, but it has not explained away 
religion; the fact of religion still remains a fact. 
So science has explained, through biology and 
psychology, the intricate mechanism of both the 
physical and psychical life of man, but it has 
not explained away man himself,—man as we 
know him, with all his hopes and fears, his doubts 
and faiths, has yet to be reckoned with. The 
conception that when science explains anything 
it means that the thing itself has of necessity been 
explained away, is a view that no true scientist 
would admit, though many of the modern votaries 
of science fail to see this important distinction. 

To quote from William James: “There is in- 
cluded in human nature an ingrained naturalism 

177 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and materialism of mind which can only admit 
facts that are actually tangible. Of this sort of 
mind the entity called ‘Science’ is the idol. Fond- 
ness for the word ‘scientist’ is one of the notes by 
which you may know its votaries; and its short 
way of killing any opinion that it disbelieves 
in is to call it ‘unscientific.’ It must be granted 
that there is no slight excuse for this. Science 
has made such glorious leaps in the last three 
hundred years and extended our knowledge of | 
Nature so enormously, both in general and in 
detail; men of science, moreover, have as a class 
displayed such admirable virtues that it is no 
wonder if the worshippers of science lose their 
heads. In this very university (Harvard) I have 
heard more than one teacher say that all the 
fundamental conceptions of truth have already 
been found by Science, and that the future has 
only the details of the picture to fillin. But the 
slightest reflection on the real conditions will 
suffice to show how barbaric such notions are. 
They show such a lack of scientific imagination 
that it is hard to see how anyone who is advancing: 
actively any part of science can make a mistake 
so crude. Think how many absolutely new scien- 
tific conceptions have arisen in our own genera- 
tion, how many new problems have been formu- 
178 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


lated that were never thought of before, and then 
cast an eye upon the brevity of science’s career. 
It began with Galileo three hundred years ago. 
Four thinkers since Galileo, each informing his 
successor of what discoveries his own lifetime 
had seen achieved, might have passed the torch 
of science into our hands as we sit here in this 
room. ... Is it credible that such a mushroom 
knowledge, such a growth overnight as this, can 
represent more than the minutest glimpse of 
what the Universe will really prove to be when 
adequately understood? No! Our science is a 
drop, our ignorance a sea. Whatever else be cer- 
tain, this at least 1s certain: That the world of 
our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a 
larger world of some sort, of whose residual 
properties we at present can frame no positive 
idea.” ; : 

These words are as true today as when William 
James first wrote them, and it is no disparage- 
ment of science, least of all of the scientific 
‘method for ascertaining knowledge, to admit 
that all our knowledge is a relative thing and 
that the more we come to know, the more con- 
scious we become of the ultimate mystery that 
surrounds us on every side. This last class of 
“moderns” realize this fact, and, while it gladly 

L792 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


gives science all credit for the knowledge it has 
disclosed and for the still greater knowledge it 
will yet discover, it is not quite so certain as 
some that we now live by sight and not by faith, 
or that faith in some form can be altogether dis- 
pensed with in modern life. It knows that under- 
lying mathematics and all the natural sciences 
are fundamental axioms and postulates which 
are “caprices” and which are selected, for prac- 
tical purposes, out of an infinity of “possible 
worlds.” A certain kind of “faith,” therefore, 
lies at the basis of all science and is the incentive 
of all scientific investigation. 

In its response to the President’s message as 
to the need of faith, this last group of moderns 
are inclined to believe that the faith needed to- 
day is in no sense a “faith” that is contradictory 
to the findings of science, neither is it a faith 
that is swallowed up and lost in science, but 
rather a new and nobler type of faith that co- 
operates with and uses science for the achieve- 
ment of its great ideals. Let me attempt to set 
forth the nature of this “‘faith’’ demanded by our 
modern age. ee 

In the familiar definition of faith that occurs 
in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews 
we are told that “Faith is the substance of things 

180 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 
The two parts of this definition are usually sup- 
posed to be supplementary, but, as a matter of 
fact, they present two radically different con- 
ceptions of faith; and the attempt to unify them 
leads to all the vagaries and confusions in which 
popular thought on this subject abounds. Each 
of these different conceptions has played an im- 
portant part in religious traditions as well as in 
recent controversy. Faith may be either “the 
substance of things hoped for,” or it may be 
“the evidence of things not seen,” and, as we 
shall show, it makes a very real difference which 
these view-points we adopt. Let us consider 
the second conception first. 

“Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” 
If faith be regarded as a type of evidence, then 
it inevitably comes to serve as the basis for be- 
_ liefs. Faith as evidence, therefore, is some- 
thing to be formulated in doctrines and creeds, 
just as scientific evidence is translated into laws 
and formulas. Sometimes the ultimate faith is 
placed in an Institution, as in the case of the Ro- 
man Catholic Church, which is supposed to have 
the authority to formulate faith in particular 
beliefs, which the people must accept. Some- 
times the ultimate faith is placed in the Bible, 
. 181 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


as in the case of Protestantism, where each sect 
formulates its beliefs based upon its own par- 
ticular interpretation of the Bible. But in each 
case faith is regarded as evidence, furnished in 
one instance by the Church, in the other by the 
Bible, to be formulated into beliefs that give 
conviction, assurance or certainty. It is this con- 
ception of faith that underlies all creedal re- 
ligions,—a faith that furnishes evidence of things 
that are to be believed. A man’s faith, then, 
comes to consist in the things he believes; that 
is, In certain intellectual propositions that have 
been formulated. ‘This has been the popular 
and traditional conception of faith. 

It is only a question of time, however, when 
these formulations of beliefs come to possess, for 
those who hold them, the value of knowledge, — 
different it may be, but of a “higher” quality 
than the knowledge gained from other sources. 
These doctrines appear now to the believer to 
contain “inspired” or “revealed” truth which 
should take precedence over all other knowledge. 
This view gave rise to the dictum of the Church 
Fathers, credo quia absurdum, “I believe be- 
cause it is absurd”; the more impossible a be- | 
lief was to reason, the greater the faith. Thus 
“faith” tended to lose its original character and 

182 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


became a “higher knowledge,” which could, and 
should, be opposed to all other knowledge. 

It is upon this conception of faith as a “higher 
knowledge” that fundamentalism opposes mod- 
ernism. Biblical scholarship has made clear the 
origin of the various writings that compose our 
Bible. It tells of the life and personality of 
each of the different authors. It describes the 
age in which he lived and the people for whom 
he wrote. It points out the discrepancies, the 
inconsistencies, the contradictory statements and 
the mistakes that clearly have their place in the 
Bible. And it comes to the conclusion that, what- 
ever its greatness may consist in, we do not 
possess in the Bible an infallible book. But to 
this scientific conclusion about the Bible the 
fundamentalist opposes his faith in the infalli- 
bility of the Bible, in spite of all the evidence 
to the contrary that scholarship can adduce, on 
the ground that his faith-belief contains a higher 
knowledge than that of the scholars. 

In the same way science has retold for us the 
story of creation in accordance with the doctrine 
of evolution, and told it so clearly and convinc- 
ingly, with such a wealth of evidence to support 
its claim, that it seems incredible that all who 
read should not understand and accept. And 

183 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


yet Mr. Bryan, Dr. Straton; et al., persistently 
take their stand against all the findings of sci- 
ence and oppose to the bitter end the claims of 
evolution on the ground of their “faith,” which 
consists in their belief in the literal historicity 
of the early stories of Genesis. Their “faith,” 
presumably, gives them a “higher knowledge” 
about the creation than any knowledge of science. 

Similarly, historical criticism has taken the 
Gospel narratives of the New Testament and 
discovered that the two widely different stories 
of the birth of Jesus did not have a place in the 
original narratives, that they are a later addi- 
tion, that in both Matthew and Luke they ex- 
plicitly contradict the statements in the genea- 
logical tables that precede them, that they ex- 
press in poetic form the current belief in a virgin 
birth as the only way to account for an excep- 
tional character, and that, in their literal form, 
they violate all the laws of procreation as we 
know them, besides casting a slur on human 
motherhood. But the fundamentalist still stoutly 
maintains his “faith” in the historicity of the 
Virgin Birth stories, which he regards not strictly 
as faith but as knowledge,—a “higher know]l- 
edge” than that of historical and literary criti- 
cism. 

184 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


The results of this conception of faith as evi- 
dence, giving a kind of “higher” knowledge 
which can and must be opposed to all other 
knowledge of every sort,—the conception of | 
faith as synonymous with certain definite beliefs 
which can never be changed, that has played so 
large and determining a part in religion in the 
past, must be clearly self-evident. 

In the first place, this kind of faith always 
divides and never unites men. If my faith is 
a formulated creed, then all who believe my creed 
can join with me, and all who do not must go 
elsewhere. Eivery creed is always divisive and 
separative, and inevitably draws lines between 
men who should belong together. The tragic 
religious divisions that fill the world are but the 
outcome of faith regarded as synonymous with 
certain beliefs, whereas the faith demanded to- 
day is one that shall be able to unify men and 
bind them together in loving fellowship. 

But again, the conception of faith as evidence 
always tends to the divorce between faith and rea- 
son; it leads man to force himself to “believe” 
what his reason tells him is not true, and this 
in the name of religion. It means the destruc- 
tion of the integrity of man’s intellectual and 
moral life, and the separation within himself of 

185 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


what should never be divided. It makes inevi- 
table such tragic controversies within organized 
religion as we are witnessing today,—contro- 
versies which have nothing whatever to do with 
real religion in the moral and spiritual sense. 
And lastly, this conception of faith as evidence 
or belief, tends to the divorce of religion from 
character, so that one ends by enshrining his 
faith in a creed which he repeats in church on 
Sunday, instead of embodying it in his life, to 
be lived forth every day of the week in all his 
relations with his fellows. 

Every man who thinks at all and who attempts 
to formulate what he really believes will have 
his own personal credo, however simple or brief, 
and he will keep what he believes open to re- 
vision constantly, as the new light comes through 
the widening of experience. But this is a very 
different thing from the use that has been made 
of creeds in the past and is never to be con- 
founded with a“‘living faith.” And this leads 
us to the consideration of the second part of the 
definition of faith. 

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” 
The contrast is clearly obvious. The doctrine 
of an Infallible Bible may be, to some minds, 
a legitimate object of “belief,” but it is scarcely 

186 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


a thing “to be hoped for.” The doctrine based 
on the stories of creation in Genesis may be 
an object of belief, but it is hardly the kind 
of thing we hope for. We may believe in the 
Virgin Birth, but it does not belong to the things 
we hope for. And so with the Trinity, and 
all the other doctrines of theology. When faith 
is viewed under the category of hope rather than 
under that of evidence or belief, its subject-mat- 
ter shifts from the ground of assurance in the 
existence or reality of a thing to our willingness 
to look forward to it as an object of our deepest 
interest or endeavor. 

In this second conception of faith we pass 
from the world of postulates to that of possi- 
bilities, from foundations to goals, from beliefs 
to ends in view, from convictions to aspirations. 
Postulates, foundations, beliefs, convictions may 
be necessary and valuable,—I believe they are,— 
but they are never to be confused with a living 
faith that, by its very nature, belongs in a world 
of possibilities, of goals, of ends in view, of aspi- 
rations. Faith consists of the willingness to pur- 
sue untiringly the things for which we hope. 
It is the power by which we seek daily to trans- 
_late possibilities into realities. 

In so far as religion is a life of faith, then 
187 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


religion is more like a search for something that 
is missing,—something that has been glimpsed 
but not yet attained,—both in my own life and 
in the life of society, than it is like a system 
of beliefs about something already found in the 
past. If the word “God” be taken as the symbol 
of the objects of faith, we may put this in more 
traditional language by saying that religion is 
concerned not so much with the problem of find- 
ing evidence for the existence of God, as with 
the problem of seeking a God who now appears 
to hide His face. Countless lives have “found 
God” all down through the past and have trans- 
lated what they found into the Bibles of the 
race. ‘To accept what they have written of their 
own experiences in their search for God is to 
believe that these souls in the past found God, 
which is a very different thing from finding him 
for ourselves. Every age must find its own 
God, for the gods of the past will never suffice 
for the needs of the present. Every individual 
must search for God until he finds Him, and it is 
faith that sends one out on that search in the 
clear knowledge that the search of no other 
single soul in all the range of history can ever 
take the place of one’s own personal search for 
that God who is truth and goodness and beauty. 
188 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


Faith is not evidence for the existence of the 
unseen, but willingness to search for that which 
we hope some day to see. To change slightly 
those great words of Lessing: If God were to 
offer me in one hand, faith as evidence of the 
unseen, and in the other, faith as the search for 
what I hope to see, I would take faith as the 
search for what I hope, for in that search lies 
the greatest zest of life, through that search I 
gain the discipline of life, and by means of that 
search I become worthy of that for which I hope. 

William James has developed this last con- 
ception of faith more fully than any other recent 
philosopher, though not always consistently. In 
his familiar address entitled, “Is Life Worth 
Living?” he has been discussing faith in an un- 
seen moral order, and he asks the question, “but 
will our faith in the unseen world verify itself? 
Who knows? Once more it is a case of maybe. 
And once more maybes are the essence of the 
situation. I confess that I do not see why the 
very existence of an invisible world may not in 
part depend on the personal response which any- 
one of us may make to the religious appeal. 
God Himself, in short, may draw vital strength 
~ and increase of very being from our fidelity. For 
-“my own part, I do not know what the sweat 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they 
mean anything short of this. If this life be not 
a real fight, in which something is eternally 
gained for the universe by success, it is no bet- 
ter than a game of private theatricals from which 
one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a 
real fight; as if there were something really wild 
in the universe which we, with all our idealities 
and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem. And 
first of all to redeem our own hearts from athe- 
isms and fears. For such a half-wild, half-saved 
universe our nature is adapted. The deepest 
thing in our nature is this dumb region of the 
heart in which we dwell alone with our willing- 
nesses and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears. 
As through the cracks and crannies of subter- 
ranean caverns the earth’s bosom exudes its 
waters, which then form the fountain-heads of 
springs, so in these crepuscular depths of per- 
sonality the sources of all our outer deeds and 
decisions take their rise. Here is our deepest 
organ of communication with the nature of 
things; and compared with these concrete move- 
ments of our soul all abstract statements and 
scientific arguments, the veto, for example, which 
the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith, 
sound to us like mere chatterings of teeth. For 
190 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


here possibilities, not finished facts, are the reali- 
ties with which we have to deal; and to quote 
William Salter, ‘as the essence of courage is to 
stake one’s life on a possibility, so the essence of 
faith is to believe that the possibility exists.’ 
These, then, are my last words to you: “Be not 
afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living 
and your faith will help create the fact.” 

Let me seek to make this distinction between 
the faith that is mere belief, and the faith that 
earnestly seeks the objects of its hope, a 
little clearer by a few illustrations. Suppose, 
when the reparation question was uppermost, 
you had approached a European statesman with 
the question: ‘Do you believe that there exists 
a solution to the reparation problem?” He 
might have replied: “I hope so.’ But if you 
had persisted he might have grown impatient 
and said: “Don’t disturb me with such foolish 
questions. I am too busy trying to find a solu- 
tion to argue with you whether or not one ea- 
ists.” Or suppose he had consented to argue 
with you about the existence of a solution to 
his problem, as the theologians have been argu- 
ing about the existence of God for all these 
- centuries, what would have been the result? 
Neither you nor he, presumably, would have 

191 1 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


known the solution, and any arguments you. 
might have mustered for or against its existence 
would probably have been highly speculative. 
Certainly by devoting time and energy to this 
argument you would have been hindering rather 
than helping the actual discovery of a solution, 
if there is one. If one has faith in a problem, 
one works at it; if not, one works at other 
problems which seem more promising. 

What do we mean by faith in humanity? Do 
we not mean our feeling that in every man and 
woman the whole world round there is the pos- 
sibility of the development of the moral and 
spiritual life? We do not know that it exists 
in all men; in countless lives, from our view- 
point, we see no evidence of its existence; our 
experience with human nature as it is, more 
often than not, seems to point directly against 
any such view. But we do see the develop- 
ment that has taken place in the direction of 
moral character in some lives, past and present, 
and we hope that the-capacity for similar de- 
velopment, now latent and unrecognized, may 
lie in all men. We may be wrong in this view; 
it may eventually turn out that humanity as a_ 
whole is utterly incapable of ever conquering 
the brute and learning to control the savage that 

192 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


dwells in human nature. But we dare to pin 
our faith to the possibility, and in that faith we 
give our efforts to the realization of our hope 
that one day the possibility may be realized. 
What do we mean by faith in social justice? 
Certainly we do not mean that we believe that 
social justice now exists. We know that it has 
no existence throughout the world save in our 
dreams. ‘The masses of men and women in every 
land are either suffermg dumbly from countless 
forms of injustice and oppression, or else are 
struggling more or less vaguely for the simple 
justice that is denied them. The injustices un- 
der which the millions live and toil in our in- 
dustrial civilization appear to many to be 
eternally rooted in the very nature of things. 
Changes can be made, to be sure, and reforms 
are indeed brought about from time to time, but 
injustices, in old or new forms, seem to persist 
in spite of all reforming efforts. And yet our 
faith, based not on evidence that is now seen, 
but on our hopes of what one day may appear, 
leads us to work and sacrifice daily for the com- 
ing of more of justice into the collective life of 
man. We may be deceiving ourselves by these 
hopes; it may eventually turn out that this world 
is one in which injustices must always have their 
193 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


place; we do not know. But in just the meas- 
ure that we do possess the living faith in justice 
do we go forth to work unceasingly for the 
realization of our hopes that some day social 
justice will be achieved. 

What do we mean by faith in democracy? 
Certainly not tinat we believe that democracy now 
exists except as an ideal. As a matter of fact, 
the progress that the world seemed to be mak- 
ing towards democracy has in these last few 
years received a serious check. Emperors and 
kings have indeed gone into the discard as one 
result of the war, but the old autocracy has re- 
appeared in various new forms of dictatorship, 
and government of the people, for the people 
and by the people seems just now further from 
realization than during the last one hundred 
years. Even the belief in democracy as an ideal 
has suffered eclipse in many thoughtful minds. 
And yet, in spite of the non-existence of de- 
mocracy today and of all the conditions that 
seem to be working against it,—even because 
of these conditions,—we dare to place our faith 
in democracy chiefly because we hope that by 
our persistent efforts it may yet come to exist. 
The very fact that democracy is something we 
are working towards, not something that is actu- 

194 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


ally given, makes it the object of faith, rather 
than of knowledge. : 

What do we mean by faith in World-Peace? 
Everywhere the pacifist is scorned and looked 
upon as a weakling. The rulers of nations still 
pin their faith to armies and navies, to aircraft 
and poison bombs, to force and violence. War 
has not succeeded in destroying war, but only 
in inflaming the spirit of militarism and violence. 
The causes that breed wars have been multi- 
plied a hundredfold. To the grim realist our 
hopes of world-peace seem woven of the thin 
and tenuous texture of which mere dreams are 
made; it may be he is right. It may turn out 
to be true that in this world war will always 
exist, that men and nations will never learn the 
better way; they may never learn how to con- 
trol their belligerency and live the life of co- 
operation and peace. And yet, in spite of all 
these forbidding facts that exist, we dare to 
espouse the faith in the possibility of peace even 
in a world like this, simply because we can never 
abandon the hope that by our untiring: efforts 
_ war can at length be driven forever out of the 
life of humanity. 

What do we mean by faith in life as a whole? 
We mean the recognition that life, fundamen- 

195 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


tally, is problematic and adventurous; it does 
not stretch out before us all clear and plain; it 
is full of uncertainties; it involves for all of us 
the taking of chances. Even to the mature mind 
life presents itself as a “big, blooming, buzzing 
confusion,’ for we are all caught up in move- 
ments of whose outcomes we are ignorant; we 
find ourselves groping more or less vaguely in 
an alien world. One may, if he chooses, take 
these facts as final, and regard life as consist- 
ing only of this strange medley of order and 
chaos, of unity and diversity, of harmony and 
strife, of ignorance and knowledge, which we dis- 
cover it to be. One may regard life as a farce 
in which we human beings who are inclined to 
take ourselves so seriously are only playing silly 
or meaningless roles, or one may look upon it 
as a tragedy in which we are constantly battling 
against fate. There is no refuting such philoso- 
phies. But, on the other hand, one may feel, 
in spite of all the medley that life involves, that 
life does “mean intensely and mean good.” Life 
may challenge our intellect as well as our imagi- 
nation and we may come to regard life as radi- 
cally adventurous. We may think of ourselves 
as embarked upon a voyage of discovery. We 
may analyze the possibilities of life and choose 
196 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


between them. We may entertain hopes and 
act upon them. We may make demands on life; 
we may live by faith in what we hope to achieve. 
It may possibly turn out that life is only a silly 
farce or the supreme tragedy,—who really 
knows? Who can be certain in advance? It is 
just because life is so problematic and adven- 
turous that it demands faith of us; and “religious 
faith” is no different in essence from the faith 
we give to life. But let us remember that such 
faith, precisely because it is faith and not knowl- 
edge, because it makes demands on life and is 
radically adventurous, guarantees nothing. It 
dares to take a risk; it dedicates itself to the 
search for something which may possibly never 
be found. 

What do we mean by faith in God? In ancient 
India men believed that God was the One be- 
coming differentiated in the many. In the the- 
istic religions the idea of God has been indi- 
vidualized; God is a masculine, monarchical be- 
ing, the ruler of the universe. In early Judaism 
God is a heavenly King; in Christianity, a heav- 
enly Father; in Mohammedanism, a heavenly 
Sultan. In “An Ethical Philosophy of Life,” 
Felix Adler sets God forth as a “multiple God, 
a democratic, spiritual commonwealth, an in- 

197 } 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


finite organism of spirits; each human being in 
his or, her essential selfhood is an infinitesimal 
part of the infinite God.”’ God is not man, the 
individual, raised to the degree of infinity, but 
human society in all its relations, idealized, glori- 
fied, raised to the degree of infinity. 

Now we can believe in any one of these con- 
ceptions of God we choose, or in no one of them, 
but this belief about God is a vastly different 
thing from a living faith in God. If we take 
the familiar word, God, as the symbol of the 
ideal of perfection,—whatever elsé it may mean 
to us,—then our faith. in God may mean our 
faith in the possibilitiy of realizing, ever more 
fully, this great ideal in our own lives and in 
the lives of our fellows. Our faith involves the 
hope that the divine capacities are resident in 
all men, and also the hope that by our faithful 
efforts we can help to bring the divine to reali- 
zation in all men and in the life of society. Faith 
in God is not the belief that God exists, nor is 
it the knowledge that theology has professed as 
to what God is, what are His various attributes, 
what are His plans, or how He executes them. 
Faith in God is the hope that all we mean by 
the ideal of perfection that the word, God, sym- © 
bolizes, may some day come to exist in human- 

198 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


ity’s life,—the hope that sends us forth each 
day to work for that great end. 

But if faith, as we are defining it, is the power 
that leads us to make adventures and take risks 
amid all the possibilities and uncertainties of life, 
we must never forget that faith, taken by itself, 
is blind. It is a moving power, not a light. 
Faith regarded as evidence or belief, gives to 
faith an independent intellectual function that 
it does not possess, and this leads to the common 
notion that our “faith,’”’ because we can formu- 
late it into beliefs, gives us knowledge. For ex- 
ample, it is a popular idea that by faith we 
know God. But by faith alone we know noth- 
ing. By faith we are engaged in a search,— 
the search for truth, for goodness, for God,— 
but only by intelligence can we ever find them. 
Our search begins in darkness; our faith moves 
amid uncertainties, it takes risks; we must feel 
our way among shadows. But intelligence dis- 
covers pointers from time to time, it discloses 
facts, it brings insights, which make the search 
of faith not wholly blind. Let me repeat, how- 
ever, faith has no light of its own. Faith is the 
impelling force that urges us on to the search 
for the things for which we hope. But this 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


faith must have the illumination of intelligence 
to bring it to its goal. 

This faith that is the “substance of things 
hoped for” is thus far more truly religious than 
the faith that is “the evidence of things not seen,” 
—the belief that something is true or real; for 
the first kind of faith sends us out to find the 
truth and achieve our ideals, while the second 
tends to lull the soul to sleep in the thought that 
these great ends have already been found. It 
is this faith that impels to ceaseless search that 
has animated all true prophets and reformers 
down through the ages, never the mere belief 
in some creed. It is this kind of faith that has 
led the great souls in every generation to break 
step with the crowd and blaze new paths for the 
progress of humanity. It is a fact of human 
nature as well as of history that countless lives 
can live and die by the help of this kind of faith 
that exists without a single dogma or definition. 
It is this dynamic faith that alone can save the 
world. | 

Is there a place for such a faith in this mod- 
ern age? The faith that is evidence formulated 
into beliefs and embodied in creeds, while it may 
still seem important to many of the older gen- 
eration, is hopelessly gone from the life of the 

200 


FAITH IN MODERN LIFE 


new generation. The young men and women 
of today do not understand what you mean when 
you talk in the language of theology; it leaves 
them cold and utterly indifferent; they live in 
a different world,—the world that science has 
disclosed. But if we mean by faith the effort, 
the striving, the search for the things we hope 
for, then this kind of faith is indeed the pre- 
eminent characteristic of the new generation. 
In a broader but vastly truer sense it is far 
more religious than the older faith of mere be- 
liefs and creeds, and in this dynamic faith, as it 
works together with intelligence, lies all the hope 
for the future. 

It is told of a traveler in the Alps that, coming 
on the merest suggestion of a trail at night- 
fall, he concluded he had lost his way. Seeing 
a boy in the distance, he cried out to him: 
“Where is Kandersteg?” “I don’t know,” re- 
plied the lad, “but there’s the road to it,” point- 
ing to the ticklish trail. In the boy’s answer we 
have the whole practical philosophy of life. It 
is not necessary to see our destination if only 
we are on the right road. Facing the uncer- 
tainties and possibilities of life there are only 
three alternatives open to us. First, we can sit 
down if our inertia be in excess of our initiative. 

201 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Second, we can turn back if our desire to remi- 
nisce be stronger than our prophetic instinct. 
Third, we can go on, in spite of the ticklish trail. 
By our faith in the capacity for improvement 
that lies in every one of us, and in the hopes we 
cherish for the future, let ws go on in our search 
for those goals which the best and highest in us 
demand, even though they seem hidden now from 
our eyes, for this is the faith that ‘“overcometh 
the world.” 


202 


VIII 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION: 
MUST THEY REMAIN HOSTILE? 
oa cep N a recent Conference on “Education 
8 Vise) and the Public Schools,” held in New 
’ iG “/ York City, men like John Dewey, 
a=! James Harvey Robinson, Harry F. 
Ward, Henry Neumann, Harry Overstreet and 
others made statements in clearest and most em- 
phatic terms that should awaken gravest concern 
in the minds of all truly intelligent Americans. 
Let us attempt to summarize the facts set forth 
by these distinguished scholars and experts in 
the educational field: 

1. That the whole business of education, from 
the University down to the Grammar School, 
is passing through the greatest crisis it has ever 
known in this country, and that unless it can 
come through this crisis with “clean hands,” with 
its integrity and its ideals unimpaired, the fu- 
ture of education in the United States is dark 
indeed. 





203 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


2. That in our larger cities, at least, the con- 
trol of educational policies is in the hands of 
those who not only have never glimpsed a better 
tomorrow, but who do not even know that there 
has been any yesterday. 

8. That a hundred forces are at work, in subtle 
and indirect ways, to repress the spirit of free 
investigation both on the part of the teacher and 
of the pupil, thus making of the school and col- 
lege mere flunkies of the Powers-that-be. 

4, That if present conditions are allowed to 
continue, the personnel of the teaching profes- 
sion will steadily continue to deteriorate; the 
strong, competent teachers, possessed of person- 
ality, initiative and imagination, will continue to 
abandon the profession in still larger numbers 
for positions where they can employ all their 
powers and at the same time retain their self- 
respect, thus leaving the high calling of the 
teacher in the hands of those least qualified to 
train the rising generation for the duties and 
responsibilities of this new and critical age. 

5. That the great tragedy consists not in what 
such conditions do to the teacher,—that is bad 
enough,—but in what they do to the boys and 
girls who must be the leaders of tomorrow. We 
of the older generation are under solemn obli- 

204 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


gation to see to it that the coming generation 
has every opportunity to secure the right train- 
ing for its great tasks, and so long as present 
conditions continue we are failing in our supreme 
obligation. 

6. That the responsibility for such shameful 
conditions lies at the door of an utterly indif- 
ferent and apathetic public,—a public that is 
far more interested in deciding in what form of 
amusement it shall spend its leisure hours than 
it is in securing for the children and youth of 
today the kind of education to which it is en- 
titled, and which alone can fit it to bring in 
the new and better day for humanity. 

There is enough material for a dozen books 
in these disquieting and alarming conclusions — 
as to general conditions in the educational field. 
It is, after all, only another phase of the same 
general problem, for it is the conflict between 
organized religion, on the one hand, and the 
spirit of free investigation, on the other, that is 
fundamentally involved. 

The spirit of free investigation is the very 
essence of true scholarship. It alone has made 
possible every advance in knowledge, every step 
in true progress, every change for the better 
in the organized life of man. Whatever we 

205 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


really know, either in the field of the physical 
sciences or of the social sciences, is due to this. 
spirit as it has found expression in the great 
minds of the past; and the chief reason that 
the world is not further along today is found 
in the fact that in every age there have been 
the stubborn obstructionists in both state and 
church, who have done their utmost to limit, or 
even to destroy, the spirit of free investigation. 

It is to be wondered how many really appre- 
ciate the bitter struggle this spirit has had to 
make, all down through history, just to main- 
tain its existence and conserve its rights. Soc- 
rates, perhaps, deserves to stand as the Father 
of Free Inquiry. He used to wander through 
the market-place or out to the wrestling fields 
of Athens, and wherever he found listeners he 
would ask questions, calculated to stimulate free 
thinking. There was nothing too sacred or deep- 
seated in the minds of his age that he did not 
dare to question, as he did his utmost to get men 
to think for themselves. But this spirit of free 
investigation that found such full expression in 
him brought him into conflict with Powers that 
ruled both state and religion, and Socrates, great 
man though he was, was compelled to drink the 
fatal hemlock on the charge that he was subvert- 

206 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


ing the minds of the youth of Athens, that he 
was destroying the old gods and inventing new 
gods of his own. 

During the Middle Ages the power of organ- 
ized religion was so great and so widely ex- 
tended that it tended toward the almost com- 
plete suppression of the spirit of free inquiry. 
Anyone who dared to differ with the ruling con- 
ceptions of the church was a heretic, and all 
heretics were summarily dealt with. But with 
the coming of the Renaissance period, the spirit 
of free investigation burst forth afresh, and the 
printing press tremendously helped in spreading 
abroad the new ideas. Copernicus brooded over 
his heliocentric theory,—that the sun and planets 
do not revolve about the earth, but that the 
earth and planets revolve around the sun,—for 
more than thirty years. As early as 1500 he 
had announced his doctrine at Rome, but more 
in the way of a scientific curiosity or paradox. 
But the longer he studied the more convinced 
he became that it was the truth that would mean 
the complete overthrow of the prevailing Ptole- 
maic conception of the universe. At last he pre- 
pared his great book on the “Revolutions of the 
Heavenly Bodies,” and dedicated it to the Pope 
himself. The newly printed book was put into 

207 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 
his hands when he was on his deathbed. And 


a few hours later he was beyond the reach of 
the conscientious men who would have blackened — 
his reputation and perhaps destroyed his life. 
About this same time there appeared that other 
warrior on behalf of free investigation, the 
strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was 
hunted from land to land, until at last he turned 
on his pursuers with fearful invectives: For 
this he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned for 
six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at 
Rome, and then burned alive and his ashes scat- 
tered to the winds. But still the new truth lived 
on. 
_ The spirit of free investigation found a new 
champion in Galileo, and when in 1611 the rude 
telescope which he had invented showed the 
phases of Venus, the theory of Copernicus was 
_ proven true. ‘Then began the long and bitter 
conflict between Galileo and the authorities of 
the church that lasted until his death. Earnest 
preachers attacked him with perverted texts of 
Scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congrega- 
tions of cardinals and at last two popes dealt 
with him and, as was supposed, silenced his im- 
pious doctrine forever. ‘The world knows now 
that Galileo was subjected to indignities, to im- 
208 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


prisonment and exile, and to threats equivalent 
to torture. And at last, an old man, broken 
in body and disappointed in mind, worn out 
with labors and cares, dragged from Florence 
to Rome with the threat of the Pope himself 
that if he delayed he should be “brought in 
chains,” Galileo was forced to pronounce pub- 
licly and on his knees his recantation. ‘To com- 
plete his dishonor, he was obliged to swear that 
he would denounce to the Inquisition any other 
man of science whom he should discover to be 
supporting the “heresy of the motion of the 
earth.” 

With the recantation of Galileo, theology had 
triumphed, for the time being, over the clear 
truth of science. The losses to the world dur- 
ing this.complete victory of the church can never 
be estimated. Let one illustration suffice. There 
was then living in Europe one of the greatest 
thinkers ever given to mankind,—Rene Des- 
cartes. Mistaken though many of his reasonings 
were, they bore a rich possibility of fruit. He 
had. already done a vast work. The scientific 
warriors had stirred new life in him and he was 
_ working over and summing up in his mighty 
mind all the researches of his time. His purpose 
was to combine all knowledge and thought into 

209 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


a “Treatise on the World,” and in view of this 
he gave eleven years to the study of anatomy 
alone. But the tragic fate of Galileo robbed 
him of all hope and courage; the battle of truth 
seemed lost; he questioned whether mankind was 
worthy of the truth; and so he gave up his great 
plan forever. 

~In 1859 when Charles Darwin gave to the 
world his theory of evolution, the result of his 
free investigation through a period of many 
years, the old conflict burst forth anew. ‘The 
fierce battle that was waged through the six- 
ties and seventies is too recent to need descrip- 
tion. It was the dignitaries of the church in- 
cluding many officials of the state, who waged 
war upon the scientists once again. To every 
fresh attack, Darwin modestly replied, “If they 
can disprove my facts, I shall be glad to have 
them do so.”” And now once more this old age- 
long conflict seems to be renewed in our day, 
with Mr. Bryan and many of the church leaders 
as the chief protagonists. 

It is interesting to note in this connection, as 
one of the speakers at the Conference reminded 
the audience, that sixteen years ago Professor 
Sumner of Yale University made the significant 
statement: “We are on the way back to an 

210 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


orthodox political science, an orthodox eco- 
nomics, an orthodox sociology,” and we can add 
today, “to an orthodox religion as well.”’ This 
prediction was made by this distinguished scholar 
several years before the coming of the war, and 
it would seem to suggest that the reactionary 
influences from which we suffer today are not 
altogether the result of the war, to which we 
are prone to ascribe all our present evils, but 
that they go back to deeper-lying causes in mod- 
ern civilization of which the war itself was only 
a natural result. 

Andrew D. White in his notable book, “‘A His- 
tory of the Warfare of Science with Theology,” 
sums up the age-long conflict in this way. He 
tells us it passes through three stages. First, 
science would announce some new discovery 
which the church would immediately proceed to 
condemn as heresy; and if possible it would ex- 
communicate or destroy the discoverer of the 
new truth. In the second stage the church seeks 
- to reconcile its teachings with the new science 
and begins to explain its earlier condemnation. 
In the third stage, when the new truth has be- 
_come thoroughly incorporated with the old, the 
church claims that this is what it has always 
believed and taught. It is in this way, slowly 

211 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


and painfully, that the traditional theological 
notions have one by one given way before the 
advance of human knowledge and the widening 
of human experience. 

The question that presents itself to all thought- 
ful minds and that I want to attempt to answer 
is, why should this hostility exist between or- 
ganized religion and free investigation? Why 
should the church set itself so rigidly against 
the coming of any new knowledge from any 
source? Why should religion seem timid and 
fearful and hesitant and oftentimes aggressively 
antagonistic, while science is daring and adven- 
turous and confident in the presence of new 
truth? The answer is not quite so simple as 
many suppose, and involves the sympathetic 
consideration of several factors that enter into 
the problem. 

In the first place, organized religion, like or- 
ganized politics or organized anything else, in- 
evitably tends towards conservatism; and the 
more completely or perfectly it is organized the 
more conservative it becomes. It was a good 
deal easier for the one Roman Catholic Church, 
that became so great and powerful during the 
Middle Ages, practically to suppress all free in- 
quiry than it has been since the Reformation 

212 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


when Christianity has been broken up into 
many different sects. Institutionalism of any 
kind is always at the expense of life, which means 
growth and change. Institutions tend to be- 
come static while free investigation is always 
dynamic; in the nature of things, just because 
they are of the past, institutions stand for the 
status quo, whereas free investigation is for- 
ever exploring new fields.  Institutionalism 
looks backwards while: free investigation looks 
forwards. In just the degree, therefore, that 
religion, or anything else, becomes institution- 
alized, it tends to assume the conservative or 
even antagonistic attitude towards new knowl- 
edge or change of any kind. And this is true 
of the organization as a whole, even while many 
of the individuals within the organization may 
be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of free 
inquiry. This is why every reformation or 
breaking up of the older institutions of religion 
is always a good thing for religion itself, since 
it destroys the old static conditions that have 
bound religion, and sets it free to become once 
more the dynamic force it ought to be in the life 
of man. 

Since we desire to be perfectly fair to organ- 
ized religion, we must also remember that this 

213 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION _ 


seeming hostility towards new knowledge pro- 
ceeds from the sincere desire, on the part of 
many religious leaders at least, to preserve the 
moral and spiritual values that have come down 
to us from the past and which they feel are seri- 
ously endangered by the new knowledge. Such 
leaders have regarded the church as the guardian 
for humanity of priceless and unreckonable 
treasures which must be defended at all costs. 
It was precisely this feeling on the part of many, 
—that the new conception would mean the 
spiritual impoverishment, the moral deteriora- 
tion of the life of man, the loss of faith and 
hope and love and all that ennobled the soul,— 
that has stirred up all the religious panics which, 
later on, have seemed to us so uncalled for and 
absurd. I do not question but that many of the 
religious reactionaries of today are influenced 
by such honest motives—the desire to preserve 
the moral and spiritual values of life against 
what they deem the hostile attacks of science. 
And we cannot but sympathize with such mo- 
tives even though we deplore the methods em- 
ployed. 

At the time of the Jewish captivity, the one 
preoccupation of religion was, ‘““What is to be- 
come of Jehovah?” For his cult was up to then, 

214 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


in the minds of both priests and prophets, in- 
separably connected with Jerusalem and the 
Holy Land. He was a local divinity. But it 
was the crushing blow of the exile, which seemed 
to threaten the destruction of both State and 
religion that in the end gave to Judaism, and 
then to the world, the vastly nobler conception 
of monotheism. 

John Keble, one of the finest fruits of Oxford 
culture and possessed of a wonderfully keen and 
beautiful intellect, took his stand on the certainty 
of the Almighty having created all the fossils 
in the six days of creation. Can we imagine 
that such a mind would have held to a view which 
appears now so trivial and impossible, simply 
for its own sake? It was for the sake of what 
lay behind. He honestly felt that the priceless 
values of human life were at stake, and that the 
new knowledge threatened to wipe them out. 
Keble and the men of his time, like the Jews 
in captivity, felt that the very foundations of 
religion were in question; while as it has turned 
out, it was only their very imperfect and inade- 
quate notions that were destroyed by the coming 
of the larger truth. 

But still another cause for this old spirit of 
hostility lies in the mental confusion that still 

| 215 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


exists as to the permanent and transient ele- 
ments in religion. What is the permanent in re- 
ligion? It does not lie in any book or creed or 
church, but, rather, in the moral and spiritual 
nature of man himself. All Bibles, all creeds, 
all churches have come forth from what lies 
within man. Religion does not depend on any 
particular interpretation of the universe, neither 
does it depend on any particular interpretation 
of the experience of man’s inner life. It is these 
interpretations that man has made of the uni- 
verse and of his own experience that consti- 
tute the transitory elements of religion, since 
these interpretations must of necessity change 
with the widening of man’s experience and the 
coming of new knowledge. Mr. Bryan would 
have us believe that religion depends on the lit- 
eral historicity of the first chapter of Genesis, 
whereas Genesis was written and all that the 
Bible contains came into existence, as well as 
all the other Bibles of the race, because of some- 
thing in man that we have agreed to call his 
moral and spiritual nature. Differences in sect 
or in creed or in ritual are all the perfectly nat- 
ural results of the transitory interpretations 
which men of different ages and different en- 
vironments and different degrees of culture have 
216 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


put upon their experiences; but the source of 
their experience is always the same in every age 
and clime; it lies in man’s own inner nature. 
If men could only come to grasp this distinction 
between the permanent in religion which lies 
within man himself, and the transitory in religion 
which is the particular interpretation which any 
age or individual makes of human experience, we 
should go a long ways towards that unity in 
religion which is now only a dim and distant 
ideal. 

If our confidence is grounded in the per- 
manent in religion,—man’s moral and spiritual 
nature,—we need not be disturbed by any of the 
new knowledge that free investigation has made 
possible to man. Let science interpret the uni- 
verse according to all the facts, let it tell me 
all it can about my animal forbears, let it dis- 
close all its knowledge of the biological man 
that I surely am, let it explain all the chemical 
and mechanical processes that go on within my 
body, let the behaviorist in psychology explain 
the processes of my thinking and acting by simi- 
lar mechanical processes,—still, when all is said 
and done, I know that I am something more 
than an animal, that there is something in me 
that biology does not explain, that there is that 
. 217 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


which eludes the behaviorist’s psychology. I 
know that I think and feel and aspire. I know 
that I have the capacity to create the ideal and 
the will to follow the ideal. I know that I can 
glimpse the vision of my “City of God” wherein 
these moral and spiritual values of life hold the 
supreme and commanding place. 

It makes little difference to me who my pro- 
genitors were,—that is a question for science not 
for Genesis to settle—so long as I know that I 
am not satisfied with myself as I am, and am not 
content with the world as it is. I am perfectly 
willing to accept the fascinating story which 
tells me that electrons combined into atoms and 
atoms into molecules and molecules into cells 
and cells by the millions into this marvelously 
complex and intricate body I call my own, so 
long as I realize that there is a higher than the 
mere body within me. I welcome indeed all the 
light that psychology has thrown, and has yet 
to throw, upon the mysterious realms of my 
inner life, so long as I can dream my dreams 
and visualize my ideals and thus create my 
heaven here upon earth. Until there comes a 
“new knowledge” that wipes out man’s moral 
nature, that makes it impossible for him to dis- | 
tinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, 

218 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


high and low, that destroys his ability to cre- 
ate the ideal and his capacity to aspire towards 
that ideal, that blinds his eyes forever to the 
beautiful, the good and the true—until that day 
comes, the true citadel of religion in the inner 
life of man is impregnable. 

Because of the failure always to make this 
distinction between the permanent and the tran- 
sient in religion, both religion and science have 
fallen into grave errors. Religion, in seeking to 
uphold the permanent moral and spiritual values 
of life has made the serious mistake of uphold- 
ing just as strenuously the transitory interpre- 
tations of human experience, which only consti- 
tute the external envelope for the preservation 
of the inner reality from age to age. And since 
it has been the traditional theology that was be- 
ing constantly undermined by the increasing 
light of new knowledge, the church has ended 
by emphasizing the transitory theology to the 
extent of, many times, forgetting the permanent 
elements in religion. 

Ask the average person on the streets of New 
York to describe for you the different churches 
you pass. The answer will invariably be in terms 
of some sect, Catholic or Protestant or Jewish, 
Episcopal or Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian, 

219 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ete. If you question more closely, the answers 
will be in terms of some particular beliefs,— 
liberal or orthodox, this creed or some other. 
How often would you be told that this church 
stood for the moral and spiritual values of life - 
supremely, both in the individual and in the 
community? And, yet, this is just what all the 
churches of whatsoever name profess to stand for, 
since this is of the very essence of religion. For 
some strange reason the world that passes by 
thinks of our churches in terms of our sectarian 
names or of our differing creeds or of our forms 
of baptism,—the transitory things of religion,— 
rather than in terms of that which is alone per- 
manent in religion,x—man’s moral and spiritual 
life. 

But if religion has fallen into this grave error, 
science has also made a similar mistake. For 
science, in attacking the theologies and outgrown 
mythologies of the churches, as it had the right 
to do in the light of its new knowledge, has 
too often made the mistake of thinking that the 
old theology was all there was to religion; it, 
too, has confused many times the permanent 
with the transitory in religion, with the result 
that it has often tended to ignore, or be indif- 
ferent to, or even to belittle the moral and spirit- 

220 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


ual values of life. There has been grave fault on 
both sides in this age-long conflict. If religion 
has been far too fearful of the coming of new 
knowledge and the changes it might necessitate 
in its interpretations of experience, science has 
been so engrossed in its new knowledge and in 
its effect upon the transitory elements of re- 
ligion as often to forget that the real source of 
religion in man’s own inner life was still the 
same, needing only the new and deeper inter- 
pretation from age to age. 

Let me illustrate the way in which the spirit 
of free investigation has come short of its pos- 
sibilities in our own day. For more than fifty 
years now we have boasted of our modern edu- 
cational methods. Throughout Europe, as well 
as in this country, old universities have been 
strengthened and many new colleges and uni- 
versities have sprung up. Millions of money 
have been put into these institutions of learn- 
ing, elaborate equipments have been provided 
and splendid faculties of teachers developed. 
The old classical education has been revived and 
enlarged and the new scientific education has 
grown apace. With what result? Out of the 
older classical education came the men who oc- 
cupied pretty generally the official political po- 

221 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


sitions in the various countries of Europe; and 
it. was these “educated men,’ remember, who 
deliberately, by the methods of old-time diplo- 
macy, led the world into all the horrors of the 
Great War. While the men who came up out 
of the newer scientific education, with notable 
exceptions, prostituted that science to the pur- 
poses of death and destruction. Is it not clear 
that if the spirit of free investigation that has 
found such wide expression in the field of ma- 
terial facts and physical forces in our modern 
educational systems, had only included in its 
inquiries the moral and social and spiritual values 
of life, the world would certainly not be where 
it is today? 

The fact is that there are two very different 
types of religion in the world, and there al- 
ways have been. ‘These two types are finely 
illustrated in the lives and teachings of two of 
the early Church Fathers,—Tertullian and 
Origen. ‘Tertullian held that religious faith had 
nothing whatever to do with reason, that faith 
was essentially irrational. ‘The greater the con- 
tradiction between faith and reason, the more 
he gloried in his faith. Tertullian would have 
gladly agreed with the modern theological stu- 
dent who once defined faith as “that power by 

222 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


which one was able to believe what he knew was 
not true.” To him faith was something “once 
for all delivered to the saints,” to be preserved 
unchanged from age to age. New knowledge 
might come and be multiplied, but it did not 
necessitate the changing of one jot or one tittle 
of his beliefs. His faith was a static and final 
thing to be preserved in toto against the coming 
of all conceivable new knowledge. 

To Origen, however, faith was a very different 
sort of thing. It was not a set of beliefs once 
for all delivered to the saints, and by them to 
be preserved unchanged. It was an attitude of 
the entire man toward truth. It was open- 
mindedness. It involved the recognition that 
new knowledge was always coming, must always 
come, into the experience of man, and that this 
new knowledge was in no sense incompatible 
with faith. He believed that faith was a con- 
stantly growing and expanding thing, that all 
new truth only meant new and wider and deeper 
faith. For he saw faith not as something that 
contradicted reason, but rather as something 
that supplemented reason, peering beyond, as 


it were, into realms that reason had not,or could ~” 


not enter. For these reasons faith, to Origen, 
was never a static thing but tremendously dy- 
223 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


namic,—the great dynamic and energizing power 
of life. The minute it became static it ceased 
to be a living faith, and a man’s religion was 
dead. To Tertullian, faith, was ever looking 
backwards; to Origen, faith was ever looking for- 
wards and moving forwards in its assimilation 
of the new knowledge that was always coming 
to man. ‘Tertullian’s mind was closed to free 
investigation. Origen’s mind was’ ever open to 
the fullest and freest investigation possible. 

If it seems to us as if the majority of people 
today are the lineal descendants of Tertullian 
rather than of Origen, we need to remember 
that the liberal churches of whatsoever name, even 
though they seem to be hopelessly in the mi- 
nority, are nevertheless keeping alive in the 
world the noble conception of Origen, that a 
living faith must always be a growing and 
changing faith. ‘To all such, religion is never 
hostile to free investigation but welcomes the 
new truth from whatever source it may come. 

But if there are two types of religion, as we 
have defined them, so there are two kinds of 
science, or more accurately, two types of sci- 
entists. There is the narrow, dogmatic special- 
ist, who is so absorbed in the single channel he 
is exploring that he rarely if ever lifts his 

224 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


head to get a broader view of things. He lacks 
the philosophical mind. He knows all about 
analysis but nothing about synthesis. He seldom 
asks as to the relation of the facts he is dealing 
with to the larger ranges of life and experience. 
He does not seek to codrdinate his discoveries 
with knowledge in other fields. And, often, he 
is inclined to generalize as to all of life from 
the facts that lie in his own narrow and restricted 
field, which is always a dangerous thing to do. 
It is this type of man who tends to ignore or 
even belittle the moral and social and spiritual 
values of life. It is possible for such a sci- 
entist to be as narrowly ignorant, outside of 
his special field, as it is for the most orthodox 
theologian to be ignorant of science. 

Then there is the broadly intelligent scientist, 
who may do his work in some special field but 
who is not content to be limited to that one field. 
He is the scientist plus the philosopher. He 
seeks to relate his scientific facts to the rest of 
life. He seeks the meaning of his discoveries 
for man in general. He does not allow the 
physical facts or forces with which he works to 
blind his eyes to the moral and spiritual values 
of life. He recognizes frankly that there are 
limits to science, beyond which it cannot go, that 

225 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


when science has said its last word, there is still 
a place for faith and hope and love. Like Fred- 
erick Soddy, the leading chemical expert in Eng- 
land today, who refused to prostitute his sci- 
entific knowledge to destructive ends at the re- 
quest of his Government, he believes that the 
pursuit of science is for the sake of enriching 
and ennobling the whole man, both individual 
and collective. ‘These are the truly great sci- 
entists to whom the world owes an inestimable 
debt it can never pay. 

It is quite obvious that for the Origen type 
of religious man and the truly broad-minded 
scientist there is no conflict between religion and 
the spirit of free investigation; the spirit of hos- 
tility, if it ever existed, has long since given 
way to one of harmonious codperation. Where 
the conflict still exists is between the Tertullian 
man of faith and the narrow-minded specialist. 
And it should be our constant endeavor to con- 
vert the followers of Tertullian to a broader 
conception of the meaning of religion, and the . 
narrow and dogmatic specialist to a clearer rec- 
ognition of the moral and spiritual values of 
life. 

This much is clear, the spirit of free investi- 
gation can never be destroyed in man, for it is 

226 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


of the very essence of his manhood. Not to 
inquire freely is to be something less than a 
man. The right to inquire freely has cost too 
much, in all the past, to be lightly surrendered 
now, Mr. Bryan to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. It is not less of this spirit we need but 
vastly more. Organized religion is in the sorry 
plight it is today, chiefly because it has feared 
to admit frankly to its special problems this 
spirit of free inquiry. And it is safe to say that 
its problems will never be solved until it does 
dare to investigate, far more freely than it has 
ever done, the real source of religion in man’s 
inner life. 

In the past, religion has feared the spirit of 
free investigation chiefly because it felt it might 
destroy the moral meaning and spiritual signifi- 
cance of human life. But that fear has largely 
gone today, and a different fear has taken its 
place. Its fear of free investigation today,— 
let us say it frankly,—is lest the rising tide of 
the moral and spiritual life in man should de- 
mand changes in the existing social and political 
order that might not be acceptable to a large 
proportion of its membership. The most dan- 
gerous heresy in the pulpit today is not the theo- 
logical but the sociological heresy. ‘The move- 

227 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


ment in the churches today toward the older 
traditional theology is not so much the result 
of intellectual conviction as it is the fear that 
a more liberal theology may pave the way for 
more liberal social ideas, and the leaders are 
determined to resist these at any cost. 

It is at just this point that we face the real 
moral bankruptcy of organized religion. ‘The 
moral conscience of mankind is awakening, 
slowly but surely. The social consciousness in 
man is gradually being developed.. Everywhere 
earnest men and women are reaching out eagerly 
for a new and different kind of a world. And 
all this is of the very essence of religion,—of 
the permanent in religion if not of its transitory 
elements,—this is the real religion, the moral and 
social and spiritual life in man beginning to 
express itself in countless ways of promise. But 
in the presence of this real religion, the leaders 
for the most part, both clergy and laymen, are 
utterly blind to its meaning, and are seeking to 
drag the churches back to a “safe and sane”? the- 
ology, to a narrow and competing sectarianism, 
magnifying, at the expense of the permanent 
in religion, what is after all only its transitory ~ 
fringe. 

If science would extend its free investigation 

228 


RELIGION AND FREE INVESTIGATION 


so as to include man in its universe,—the whole 
man, moral and spiritual as well as biological 
and psychical,—and if religion would dare to 
revise its theologies in the light of the new knowIl- 
edge that has come, while it freely investigates 
the permanent source of religion in the inner 
life of man, might it not be possible for science 
and religion to join heart and hand in the su- 
preme task of making real God’s kingdom here 
upon earth? 


229 


IX 
WILL EDUCATION SUPPLANT RELIGION? 


a MID the myriad confusions that be- 
£A\gn| Cloud human thinking in this dawning 
MeN of the twentieth century there is no 
=== one that is more dense in all its mani- 
fold ramifications, more stubborn to enlighten- 
ment, and at the same time more obstructive to 
human advance and progress than the wide- 
spread confusion that surrounds the whole sub- 
ject of the relation of education to religion. 

On every hand one hears, either frankly ex- 
pressed, or vaguely suggested, the note of dis- 
trust of modern methods of education from re- 
ligiously inclined people. These sincerely 
perturbed critics of education, many of whom are 
themselves the products of our educational in- 
stitutions, feel more or less vaguely that there is 
“something lacking” in the training that boys 
and girls receive in our schools and colleges, and — 
that this “lack” has to do vitally with the morals 
and religion of the boy and girl; that while 

230 






EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


the head may be informed and trained those 
deeper elements that have to do with character 
building are being left undeveloped. ‘These 
people feel, rightly or wrongly, that education 
ought to lead on to the clear unfolding of the 
moral and religious life of youth, in preparation 
for their mature manhood and womanhood, and 
this supreme thing, they feel the schools are neg- 
lecting, or at least, that they are doing it in a 
very far from adequate way. They look with 
horror upon the Leopold-Loeb case in Chicago as 
only an extreme example of “the tragic results of 
our present-day secularized education.” 

Any suggestions made to supply this seeming 
“lack” in our public schools are always met by 
the reminder that this country believes in the 
separation of Church and State, and that there- 
fore no attempts can be made to furnish religious 
instruction to the pupils of our public schools, the — 
assumption always being that religious instruc- 
tion must of necessity be sectarian and theolog- 
ical. To meet this difficulty, a few years ago a 
movement was organized throughout the country 
by religious leaders in the Protestant churches 
that had as its objective the furnishing of defi- 
nite moral and religious instruction to boys and 
girls one afternoon every week in the churches 

231 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of the different denominations. In a small and 
much less adequate way, this meant following 
the example of the Roman Catholic Church in 
the work of its parochial schools, since the instruc- 
tion furnished, being left to the discretion of 
each individual pastor, naturally followed the 
denominational and creedal lines of each church. 
So far as I have been able to learn, however, this 
plan to supply “the lack” in our public schools 
has never met with any great success, owing 
chiefly to the inability of the Protestant churches 
to command the attendance of even their own 
children at these week-day church schools. 

The rise of organized fundamentalism in the 
churches has brought to the surface feelings of 
distrust and suspicion, that have long been smoul- 
dering, against our institutions of higher learn- 
ing, and we are witnessing today an aggressive 
attack by fundamentalists of all denominations 
upon the colleges and universities, and even on 
the theological seminaries, on the ground that 
they are teaching ideas that are utterly subver- 
sive of religion, that modern science as it is taught 
is destroying faith in the Bible and in the articles 
of the various creeds, that many of the foremost 
teachers in college and university are, at heart, 
“skeptics,” if not open “unbelievers,” and that as 

232 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


a result, our youth graduate from these higher 
institutions of learning, having lost all interest 
in the church of their fathers and, in many in- 
stances, having lost all faith in religion. ‘This is 
indeed a serious situation for religion if this last 
statement is true. I am not’thinking now of the 
kind of attacks that Mr. Bryan has been making 
against all teachers of evolution, or of the igno- 
rant and wholesale denunciation by Dr. Straton 
of “the atheists” who hold chairs in Christian col- 
leges and theological seminaries. I have in mind 
the many sincere fathers and mothers, who have 
often sent their children to college at great sacri- 
fice and, while they may never express it to others, 
who nevertheless cherish a sadness and often a 
bitter disappointment at what they deem the 
“skepticism” or “‘irreligion”’ imbibed in college by 
their sons or daughters. 

All these critics of modern education, from the 
view-point of morals and religion as they under- 
stand them, have the feeling that education, espe- 
cially in its higher phases, is distinctly dangerous, 
if not decidedly hostile to religion, and they are 
inclined to explain the “lax morality” of young 
people today on the ground that they have lost 
their religion through the influences of their edu- 
cation. And so they reach the conclusion that 
| 233 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


there is no harmonious relation between what we 

call education and what we mean by religion,— 
that it really comes down to a question of choos- 
ing between two exclusive alternatives,—if one 
chooses education, he must of necessity give up 
religion, and vice versa. 

On the other side stand the scientists and phi- 
losophers and scholars generally, who are devot- 
ing themselves disinterestedly to the great cause 
of modern education. And it is not strange, as 
they listen to these critics of education from the 
view-point of religion, that many of them, with 
their scientific knowledge of the universe, of his- 
tory and of human life, lose all interest in the 
churches with their narrow sectarianism and their 
obsolete theologies, while they still believe in and 
practice a religion of their own; neither is it to be 
wondered at that among these are some who lose 
all interest in religion itself, which they identify 
with creedal and ecclesiastical forms of religion, 
and regard themselves frankly as being “‘irre- 
ligious.” ‘To many of these representatives of 
education there exists the feeling, implied if not - 
expressed, that education and religion have little 
in common today, and each must naturally go its 
separate path. They make no attempt to discuss 
religion either directly or indirectly, for they say 

234 


~EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


that this leads at once to controversy and trouble, 
and they have no desire to become involved in 
theological and denominational quibbles. 

When these educational leaders realize how 
obsolete is the view-point of the fundamentalists 
and how the most ardent modernist is often guilty 
of serious compromise with truth, when they see 
how many of the churches are completely out of 
vital touch with the moral and social thought of 
today, and how lacking is all their work in any 
truly scientific approach to the modern problems 
of life, when they realize how utterly foreign to 
the highest aspirations of the age is the spirit of 
sectarianism that dominates the churches,—a 
spirit that means the negation of democracy, and 
that must forever shut the churches off from hav- 
ing any real part in the realization of a nobler, 
truer democracy than now exists,—we should not 
be surprised that the feeling is so wide-spread 
that organized religion has had its day, that the 
churches are slowly but surely disintegrating, 
and that more and more education is to supplant 
religion as we have known it in the past. Are 
we justified in taking this increasingly gaining 
view? Shall we turn our backs upon the cause 
of religion as outgrown, and henceforth devote 
our energies to “the greater cause” of education? 

235 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Must we, like so many others, make the choice 
between education and religion, as we realize that 
these two can no longer dwell harmoniously to- 
gether? These are in no sense academic ques- 
tions; they search the very roots of our life to- 
day; they suggest the basic sources of the con- 
fusion that characterizes the minds of modern 
men and women. 

In attempting to answer such probing ques- 
tions, let me first emphasize the fact that no one 
can gainsay, that in the last generation or more 
a gradual separation of education and religion has 
unquestionably been taking place, that this has 
led to what amounts practically to a divorce be- 
tween the two, and that in far too many instances 
it is a hostile, not a friendly divorce, with unjust 
accusations and more or less bad feeling on both 
sides. 

According to the mediaeval view the school was 
a handmaid of the church and the church con- 
ceived her mission as that of saving men’s souls 
from eternal perdition. A religion broad enough | 
to include everything that is worthy of being a 
part of our temporal life, and a religious educa- 
tion equally broad, were in no sense character- 
istic of the period. ‘The mediaeval view of re- 
ligion was exclusive rather than inclusive; it 

236 


_ EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


contrasted the goods of religion with the goods 
of this world, the blessings of eternal salvation 
_ with the fleeting things of time; and as a result it 
could not utilize in education the whole of man’s 
accumulated experience, but only a part of it. 
The educator was the priest,—not the man within 
the priest,—but the priest as representing the 
goal of life abstracted from the content of life. 

This tendency persisted down to comparatively 
recent times. As everyone knows, the American 
college originated as an institution of religion, 
and largely for the purpose of preparing young 
men for the Christian ministry. Its president 
was some ordained minister, chosen usually for 
his standing in the church rather than for his 
scholarly or even his administrative ability. Its 
teaching force was largely made up of ex-min- 
isters who found the classroom more congenial 
than the pulpit. Its curriculum contained He- 
brew and New Testament Greek and doctrinal 
studies, with especial emphasis laid on the “Evi- 
dences of Christianity.” 

But great and momentous changes have taken 
_ place in the curriculum, the teaching force, the 
students, and in the spirit and aim of the early 
American college; and in addition, we have to- 
day the great state universities that have come 

237 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION — 


into being entirely apart from religious traditions 
and independent of all the churches. ‘The stu- 
dents have multiplied by leaps and bounds and 
have become heterogeneous; they are no longer a 
chosen religious set. The teaching force has 
changed in the same direction, because more and 
more stress is placed upon specialized attain- 
ments, and less upon denominational or even re- 
ligious standing. Very few professors are now 
chosen from the ministerial ranks, except in the 
smaller denominational colleges. Meantime the 
range of instruction has been immensely nar- 
rowed with respect to religious subjects; all of 
these, with the possible exception of elective 
courses in the Bible, and occasionally in a few 
of the larger universities, courses in comparative 
religion, have been turned over to the theological 
seminaries. Instruction in all but the most pro- 
nounced denominational colleges have been al- 
most completely freed from dogmatic limitations. 
Until the fundamentalists began their recent at- 
tack, the professor of history or of geology or of 
almost any other subject, unless it be social eco- 
nomics, was scarcely conscious of a need of con- 
forming his teaching to a standard that exists 
outside the facts of the subject itself. Another 
notable change lies in the fact that all religious 
238 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


activities in these institutions have come to be 
managed chiefly by the students themselves. 
And finally, the college has come vastly closer to 
all so-called secular occupations. It is in much 
closer touch today with law and medicine and 
journalism and all forms of scientific and social 
research, and even with business, than it is with 
the ministry. 

It is perfectly conceivable, however, that these 
changes might have taken place in our schools 
and colleges without at the same time creating 
the cleavage that now unquestionably exists be- 
tween education and religion. Instead of the 
criticism and hostility that we now witness, these 
two might be working hand in hand in closest 
sympathy and codperation. How have they be- 
come so alienated? What has dug the gulf and 
brought about this evident lack of sympathy be- 
tween them? The answer to these questions takes 
us back to the source of so many of the momen- 
tous changes in modern times,—the influence of 
modern science. 

Gradually, since the days of Francis Bacon, of 
' Descartes, of Galileo, those great fathers of mod- 
ern science, the scientific method has been ex- 
tended to one field of inquiry after another, until 
by slow yet sure degrees, and in no sense evenly, 

239 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


science has at last captured the whole field of 
education. Here in America, for example, as 
the result of the development of the last fifty 
years especially, our schools and colleges have 
become increasingly scientific, or in other words, 
our institutions of education are today dominated 
by the scientific view-point, the scientific method 
and the scientific spirit in all departments of in- 
struction. But what do we mean by this? 

By “scientific method,” we mean a character- 
istic mode of approach to the study of any field 
of human experience. This method of approach 
consists of two definite steps: (1) the observing 
and testing of a body of facts, and (2) the sys- 
tematizing of those facts, by the discovery or 
creation of appropriate conceptions and hypothe- 
ses, into general truths. The “scientific spirit’ 
is the patient, disinterested, painstaking spirit of 
willingness to search for the facts, all the facts 
and nothing but the facts, and to postpone the 
drawing of any final conclusion until all the facts 
are known. And the “scientific view-point”’ is 
that which frankly recognizes that all our real 
knowledge,—that is, all that we really know in 
contrast to what we imagine or believe, or think 
we know,—in every field of human inquiry, must 

240 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


be based in the last analysis on the facts which 
have been carefully tested and verified. 

Education can be said to be a science in just 
the degree that it becomes dominated by this 
scientific view-point, method and spirit. And I 
think it can be said without exaggeration that 
here in our country, our educational institutions, 
and to the largest degree our colleges and uni- 
versities, have approximated more nearly to these 
scientific ideals than in any other country in the 
world. It is the scientific view-point, method 
and spirit that is imparted to the student from 
the beginning to the end of his training. If he 
does not gain these, he misses the supreme thing 
which his instructors desire above all things to 
teach. And let us bear in mind that the essence 
of these is—knowledge based alone on verified 
facts. 

While this rapid development toward scientific 
ideals has been taking place in both our educa- 
tional theory and practice, what has been hap- 
pening in religion? Is there any sense in which 
the scientific view-point, method and spirit may 
be said to have captured religion as they have 
come to dominate education? Are the religious 
leaders, clergy and laity, possessed by the pas- 
sion for knowledge that is based alone on verified 

241 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


facts? Of a few Christian scholars, scattered 
here and there, this is certainly true, as it is of a 
comparatively small number of church leaders. 
But the strength of the fundamentalist move- 
ment, as we are witnessing it at this very hour, 
only proves how pitiful is the minority of those 
in all churches who are seeking to carry the ideals 
of education into their religion. 

For by far the great majority of conventionally 
religious men and women, the scientific approach 
to the problems of religion or of human life is 
absolutely unknown. ‘To them the authority in 
religion is not the supreme authority of truth, it 
is rather the authority of an institution or a creed 
or a book. The only pathway they know to 
knowledge in religion is the pathway of faith, not 
the pathway of verified facts, and it is faith con- 
ceived not as the sum total of a man’s attitude 
toward life, but as something that is synonymous 
with belief in certain dogmas. ‘To them the truth 
in religion comes not through earnest seeking 
until one finds the facts, but it comes through a 
“revelation” handed down through centuries to 
this modern age. And when the spirit of free 
inquiry begins to investigate the facts of this . 
“revelation,” the cry of heresy is immediately 
raised. 

242 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


How much do any of our churches know of the 
scientific approach to the moral or social or eco- 
nomic problems of today as compared with the 
outstanding men and women who are working in 
these particular fields in the educational world? 
Think how much of the home, foreign or city mis- 
sionary work of the churches is carried on under 
ideals and according to methods that are leagues 
removed from scientific ideals! Remember how 
much of the benevolent and charitable work of 
the churches makes no attempt to get at the un- 
derlying causes of conditions that make for pov- 
erty and disease, immorality and crime, but only 
seek to assuage their surface symptoms! 

I am not questioning the sincerity of any man, 
or of any organization, nor do I deny that a cer- 
tain kind of “good” is being done through all 
these traditional and conventional methods. 
What I am trying to make clear is that organized 
religion, of whatever brand, in its fundamental 
conceptions of the universe, of human life, and 
of human relationships as these apply to religion, 
as well as in its method of approach to modern 
problems, is hopelessly antiquated and belated. 
It has scarcely been touched, much less trans- 
formed, by the scientific ideal and spirit as these 
243 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


have. permeated and transformed education from 
top to bottom. 

Whatever shortcomings there may be in mod- 
ern education,—and there are many,—education 
today is unquestionably devoting itself more and 
more unreservedly to the realization of the ideals 
and the spirit of science in every branch of in- 
quiry. While whatever good organized religion 
may be doing,—and it is assuredly accomplish- 
ing much good,—it has never dared as yet to 
surrender itself to the scientific ideals, and it 
knows little or nothing of the scientific spirit. 
To education, the pathway to knowledge is 
through the discovery and verification of facts. 
To religion, the pathway to knowledge is through 
faith which, in most instances, means belief in cer- 
tain dogmas of the past. 

This is the basic explanation of the fact that 
cannot be denied, though it is often glossed over, 
that there has come a serious separation between 
education and religion in our day, that a cleav- 
age exists that fair words do not heal, that a gulf 
divides that no-compromise can bridge. And the 
cause lies here: In all its thinking, its methods © 
and its spirit, education has become scientific; © 
while in all its thinking, its methods and its spirit, 
religion has remained pre-scientific. 

244 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


Having pointed out the fact that such a gulf 
of separation does exist between education and 
religion, I want to emphasize just as strongly an- 
other fact,—that our modern conceptions both of 
education and of religion are essentially the same, 
and that if we could but clearly grasp these con- 
ceptions and come to realize how fully they ex- 
press the soul of both education and religion, the 
gulf of separation that now exists would be filled 
in and the world might havea new lease of light 
and life. 

It is difficult to find a definition of education 
that is wholly satisfactory. The best of them 
seem to leave something out. I would like to rec- 
ommend the defining of education as a possible 
exercise for private meditation. Let each one ask 
himself what he means by “education”’; and if he 
ponders the question deeply he will discover that 
in order to answer it he will have to probe down 
to the innermost meaning of life itself. Think- 
ing earnestly about the meaning of education 
compels us to face the big fundamental questions 
of life as we never have before. Such thinking, 
for example, reveals the fact that religion and 
education are not two separate things, but one 
thing; two only on the surface, but one in the 
ultimate foundations and the final aim. They 

245 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


are not two things that can say to one another: 
“You go your way and I will go mine,” as they 
are inclined to say today; but things that must 
move together, and move in the same direction, if 
each is to attain its highest ends. 

Is the goal of education knowledge? Assur- 
edly yes, but knowledge for what? Is its goal 
power? Again yes, but power to what end? Is 
its goal social adjustment? The modern age 
replies emphatically, yes, but what kind of ad- 
justment shall it be, and determined by what 
ideals? That education aims not at mere knowl- 
edge or mere power of any kind, but at knowl- 
edge and power put to right uses is clearly recog- 
nized by the most progressive educational 
thought, though not by the popular opinion of 
the day. That education therefore is both ethi- 
cal and social in its end and its process, is clearly 
indicated in the following statements from mod- 
ern leaders in the educational field: 

William James: “Education cannot be bet- 
ter described than by calling it the organization 
of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to 
behavior.” 

Herbert Spencer: “To prepare us for com-— 
plete living is the function that education has to 
discharge.” 

246 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


Arnold Tompkins: “The true end of teaching 
is one with the true aim of life; and each lesson 
must be presented with the conscious purpose of 
making the most out of the life of the one 
taught.” 

J.P. Monroe: ‘The question to be asked at 
the end of an educational step is not, ‘What has 
the pupil learned?’ but “What has the pupil be- 
come?’ ” 

As a still clearer conception of the modern idea 
of education let me quote from John Dewey, the 
foremost exponent of the “new education”’ in this 
country: “I believe that education is the funda- 
mental method of social progress and reform. 

. I believe that education is a regulation of 
the process of coming to share in the social con- 
sciousness. . . . I believe that the school is pri- 
marily a social institution. Education being a 
social process, the school is simply the form of 
community life in which all those agencies are 
concentrated that will be most effective in bring- 
ing the child to share in the inherited resources 
of the race, and to use his own powers for social 
ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a 
process of living and not a preparation for future 
living.” 

If we let this last statement of John Tee 

247 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


express for us the ideals of the “new education,” 
we discover that, on this view, education is more 
than a science; it is a craft. As Samuel Butler 
put it, “Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing.” 
It is part of the great work of Sanderson of 
Oundle, with whose personality and methods Mr. 
H. G. Wells has recently acquainted us, that he 
asserts in all subjects, that real work amongst 
concrete problems is the ground out of which 
flowers any systematic thought-about these prob- 
lems which is worthy of the name. But Sander- 
son’s work goes much farther than this. When 
he says that he wants scientific men to claim a 
Jarger share in the work of the world, and not to 
confine themselves to what is commonly called 
science, he is insisting on the extension of the 
scientific spirit in every field of thought and en- 
deavor. By the duty and service of science which, 
Jet us keep in mind, has come to dominate modern 
education, Sanderson meant that scientific men 
should bring their ideal of life, their vision and 
their methods to the problems raised by the social 
structure which science has itself brought into 
being. “Our industrial life,” he said, “is imper- 
fectly organized; all our troubles are due to the 
fact that we have a process created by science, 
but organized in the old way by men of a differ- 
248 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


ent outlook.” And so in his school he tried to 
replace explicit teaching by “finding out;” to 
substitute the laboratory for the classroom. Thus 
he made an appeal to the constructive impulse in 
his boys instead of to the acquisitive instinct. 
And it is his testimony that the boys soon ceased 
to have any desire to make anything for them- 
selves. “What they love to do is to take part in 
some great work that must be done for the com- 
munity, some work that goes beyond them, some 
great spacious work.” Sanderson therefore felt 
that he could point out the way to hopeful ad- 
vance when he said that the great thing was to 
enlist boys and girls in the service of man today 
and man tomorrow. And since to him, the ideal 
school was a model of the world to be, he believed 
that this same way is the path of advance for the 
world outside school. 

The “new education” has for its great end, 
therefore, the training and development of the 
individual for social ends, that is, for the largest 
service to man. This involves the directing of 
whatever knowledge and power is gained through 
education to the highest moral and social ends. 

If it is difficult to find a satisfactory definition 
“of education, it is far more difficult to find a defi- 
nition of religion that will satisfy the modern 

249 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


mind. All the old classic definitions either imply 
a conception of the supernatural that has been 
banished from modern thought, or else contain - 
theological implications whose contents are no 
longer vital to our age. Let me give you the 
statement of Edward Scribner Ames in his book, 
“The Psychology of Religious Experience.” He 
describes religion as “the consciousness of the 
moral and social values of life.”” Here is no sug- 
gestion of any supernatural, no hint of any the- 
ological implications whatever. ‘To those, there- 
fore, for whom religion is still bound up with 
conceptions of the supernatural or with the dog- 
mas of some theology, this statement may seem 
to lack certain of the essential elements of re- 
hgion as we have known it in the past, or as we 
hear it presented today. 

But let us reflect for a moment on the history 
of all religions. ‘The priest in religion always 
precedes the prophet. When the prophet ap- 
pears, with his burning moral and social message, 
he finds religion all bound up with systems of 
metaphysics, with rituals and creeds, with the ~ 
formalism of institutions of various kinds. And 
it is always his great mission to discover real re- 
ligion and to liberate it from all the complexities 
of ritual and creed in which he finds it em- 

250 


_EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


bedded. And so Buddha teaches his noble 
‘“Eight-fold Path” in which religion is set forth 
in simple terms of moral and social relationship, 
apart from all conceptions of theology; and in 
the Sermon on the Mount, where we have the 
summation of the teachings of Jesus, there is 
not a hint of creed or ritual, of theology or church 
as such, but rather, the enunciation of great 
principles for the conduct. of life in its moral 
and social aspects. In the message of its great 
prophets religion has always been a social thing, 
that is to say, it has preached unity, it has broken 
down distinctions, it has practised brotherhood; 
in a word, dependent on the age and the environ- 
ment, its prophets have always recognized and 
made supreme the moral and social values of life 
in contradistinction to the priest’s emphasis upon 
the theological and ecclesiastical side of religion. 
The priestly conception of religion is always ex- 
elusive, while the prophetic conception is always 
inclusive; and in the inclusiveness of the prophet’s 
message lies the foundation of all moral and 
social values. 

If we could only free our minds from these 
priestly conceptions of religion, which have al- 
ways been in the world but against which the 
true prophet of God in every age has always 

251 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


contended, and clearly grasp the prophetic con- 
ception as it has come down through the cen- 
turies in terms of man’s moral and social life, it 
might not be so difficult for some of us to see 
that this modern statement of Ames contains the 
very heart and kernel of true religion, and that, 
regardless of creeds and organizations which 
change from age to age, and which have always 
been, and must always continue to be, different 
to different people, religion in its universal, its 
moral and its spiritual terms, is nothing else than 
the consciousness of the moral and social values 
of life. On this basis all good men and true are 
included in religion, regardless of creed or church, 
if only they have awakened to the moral and so- 
cial values of life. The only men who could 
not be regarded as religious, regardless of their 
creed or church, would be those to whom the 
moral and social values of life had no meaning, 
and from whom they called forth no response. 

In spite, then, of the gulf of separation that 
lies today between education and religion, judged 
by the most modern conceptions of the ideals and ~ 
aims of both, as voiced by their foremost leaders, 
education and religion are essentially one,—they 
both have as their great end, though employing 
somewhat different means, the developing in man 

252 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


of the consciousness of the moral and social values 
of life. 

The problem for this age thus becomes clear: 
How can this essential wuty between education 
and religion be grasped and realized by all, as it 
is today only by the few? How can the existing 
gulf be bridged so that educationists and religious 
teachers, college professors and ministers, shall 
come to think of themselves as codperators in a 
common task, while they work in different places 
and employ different means? How can all edu- 
cation become religious in the sense that we have 
defined religion, and how can all religion become 
educational, in the sense of accepting frankly the 
ideals and spirit and vision of science? 

It is clear to my mind that the two must come 
into closer fellowship, that the time has come 
when the exigencies of the present age with all its 
baffling problems demand that they form a part- 
nership, in which there shall be no attempt at 
domination on either side. In the new age that 
is dawning for both of them, they will sorely need 
each other’s help. Education will have much to 
learn from essential religion as we are just be- 
‘ginning to glimpse it; but religion also will 
have just as much to learn from education. On 
the one hand, a religious spirit must enter into 

253 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


all education; on the other, an educational spirit 
must enter into all religion. . 

We commonly classify education under three 
heads,—primary, secondary and higher. To 
these three I should like to add a fourth, highest. 
The highest education is religion, but it is also 
education. ‘There is a sense in which it needs to 
be prepared for by the three kinds which precede 
it in point of time, but there is a deeper sense in 
which the highest education should always be 
present in the other three, not directly but in- 
directly, like a background, an atmosphere, the 
clear and conscious vision of the end to be at- 
tained through the process of the education ob- 
tained in school and college, but even more, 
through the still broader education that never 
ceases in the larger school of life itself. That 
which begins as primary education should end 
in religion,—the clear, full consciousness of the 
moral and social values of life. And that which 
ends as religion should begin in primary educa- 
tion. Religion in the modern sense, and also in © 
its purest form, too, might be defined as educa- 
tion raised to its highest power, even as our fore- 
most leaders of education are visualizing it to- 
day. 

It may be that there are some who feel that 

254 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


in thus making religion one with education I 
am, in a way, degrading religion, or placing it 
on a lower plane than it deserves to occupy. In- 
stead of lowering religion I am seeking to elevate 
and broaden education. What I earnestly de- 
sire is to bring both religion and education so 
close to the real life of this modern age, to show 
the vital relation of both to the whole, all-around 
life of man, that the old, false and vicious divorce 
between a “‘secular’’ education on the one hand, 
and a “sacred” religion on the other, may be at 
length forever banished from the minds of men, 
and that together, in closest sympathy and co- 
operation, education and religion may do their 
supremely great work in developing in men and 
nations the consciousness of the moral and spir- 
itual values of life. 

Will education supplant religion in the future? 
It all depends upon whether their paths are to 
continue to diverge as at present, or whether in 
their ideals, methods and spirit they can be 
brought into closer fellowship and codperation. 
If education can become infused generally with 
‘the vision of its highest end, as our leading edu- 
cators see it today, and if religion can become 
permeated by the educational spirit as it seeks 
also the highest end, there is great hope for the 

255 | 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


future advance of mankind. Is there any possi- 
bility for the achievement of this desired codpera- 
tion? In my judgment, the possibility for thus 
broadening the vision of education is certain. I 
only wish I could feel confident that organized 
religion was as ready to become possessed of the 
educational spirit. 

The greatest difficulty lies in the fact that the 
literalistic teachings of the fundamentalists and 
the evasive and compromising attitude of the 
modernists, for the past generation, have so 
habituated men and women to think of religion in 
terms of a supernatural world, or of the dogmas 
of some theological creed inherited from the past, 
that they seem utterly incapable of conceiving 
religion in: terms of the living human experience 
of today. Even liberally minded religionists find 
it well-nigh impossible to abandon phraseology 
and surrender old view-points and conceptions in 
their religious thinking, that, if they stop to think, 
they will find are absolutely out of harmony with 
their scientific thinking. The pathos of the pres- 
ent religious situation is clearly apparent. In — 
this crucial hour to which all the churches have 
come, the rank and file of the membership are 
left helplessly unable to understand the profound 
issues at stake, to form an intelligent opinion on 

256 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


the controversies involved, or even to think of 
religion in any other terms than those which have 
become obsolete for all intelligent minds,—and 
this tragic condition all goes back to the lack of 
real education in religion which the religious 
leaders have failed to give. 

The supreme need is for the frank recognition 
of the fact that religion is because of what human 
nature is, that the many different forms it has 
taken in the past, in dogmas, rituals and institu- 
tions, have grown naturally out of the soil and 
environment of past ages, that because the grow- 
ing knowledge of the race has made it impossible 
for man honestly today to believe in the older 
conceptions of a supernatural world, of an infal- 
lible Bible, of the miraculous, of a God with hu- 
man passions and personal semblance, this is no 
reason why our modern age should not have the 
daring and the right to interpret its own religious 
experience in terms of today’s knowledge, both of 
the universe and of life; as a matter of fact it 
must dare thus to interpret religion in harmony 
with all the available facts as we know them, 
or else religion will decline still more rapidly 
into the veriest superstition, and its influence in 
the life of man will grow less and less as educa- 
tion spreads ever more widely. 

257 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


What is required on the part of religious 
teachers especially, and religious people gener- 
ally, is the intelligence and the will to make a 
drastic house-cleaning of their mental furnish- 
ings, especially as they apply to religion, and 
resolutely to free their minds of all those older 
conceptions of religion to which they have be- 
come habituated, not for the sake of abandoning 
religion but rather for the sake of re-interpreting 
religion in living terms. “If religious leaders 
would dare to come out into the open, if they 
would banish from their teaching all sophistry 
and evasion, if they would stand together with- 
out fear or equivocation, if they would only cease 
to be merely the critics of the old and obsolete, 
and could become possessed of the courage and 
intelligence to stand as the crusaders of a new 
and positive religious faith in the moral and social 
values of life, if they could take the raw materials 
of a genuine religious experience that are today 
lying all about us in confusion, and challenge and 
blend them into a constructive religious philos- 
ophy, touched into life by an enthusiastic and . 
aggressive leadership,” they could join hands with 
education in its lofty vision, and together, re- 
ligion and education might indeed usher in a new 
day for humanity. But can they, will they thus 

258 


EDUCATION AND RELIGION 


respond to the insistent call of this modern age? 
The future alone will answer. 

The religion of the past has dealt largely with 
the unknown, the mystical, the miraculous; it has 
depended on faith in dogma rather than in fact; 
it has cared little for the ideals of education, and 
has known even less of its spirit. The religion of 
the future, for which we are humbly helping to 
blaze the way, will deal chiefly with the known, 
the real, the natural; it will be animated by faith, 
but its faith will be founded on facts; it will ap- 
proach all problems of life and of society in the 
scientific spirit. The religion of the future will 
consist of so relating our individual lives to the 
life of society as to insure the largest possible de- 
gree of truth, beauty and goodness in the life 
of mankind as a whole. To this end we must 
first come to understand and organize the inner 
structure of our minds, then we must organize 
our knowledge of the outer world, including so- 
ciety, and then, finally we must harmonize the 
two in a genuine living religious experience. 
And this is the supreme task of education and 
religion, as they shall one day learn how to work 
together in closest sympathy for the emancipa- 
tion of men and the transformation of society. 


259 


bed 
WILL RELIGION OUTGROW THE CHURCH ? 


ge a) Ge) N A MOST illuminating and discrimi- 
veN ge nating article on the present contro- 
224] @Xeu| versy in the churches, recently pub- 
sessed] Jished in The New Republic, John 
Dewey, of Columbia University, closes his dis- 
cussion with these words: “Looking at the pres- 
ent controversy from the outside, one may believe 
that it is thoroughly wholesome, humane and 
emancipating in effect, that it will make for 
tolerance and open-mindedness, greater sincerity 
and directness of experience and statement. And 
yet one may believe that it will not accomplish 
anything fundamental until the liberal protesting 
elements have cleared up their minds on at least 
just these two points: What is the relation of 
a specially organized community and institution © 
like the church, whatever be the church, to re- 
ligious experience?) And what is the place of 
belief in religion, and by what methods is true 
belief achieved and tested?” 
260 






RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


It is this first question that I want now to con- 
sider: What, after all, is the relation of the 
church to religious experience? This is the pri- 
mary question involved in our subject,—Will 
religion outgrow the church? In my judgment 
Dr. Dewey, in asking this question, has laid his 
finger on the fundamental issue in the present 
controversy. Can a church that conceives it to 
be its primary function to perpetuate the experi- 
ence of men in the past, regardless of all the new 
light that has come into the world, possibly sur- 
vive into the future? Or, must not the church, if 
it is to continue, become the actual embodiment 
of the living experience of men of today? 

Every religious organization, at its inception, 
sprang naturally out of the soil of its time. It 
grew out of the experience of men then alive; it 
voiced those experiences and sought to satisfy 
them in terms of thoughts, and by means of 
methods that were meaningful and vital to the 
men of that day. But as time goes on, it is the 
fate of all organizations gradually to lag behind 
the constantly growing and expanding experi- 
ences of mankind. This is just as true of po- 
htical and social institutions as it is of religious 
organizations. In a truly alive and healthful 
society the constant readjustment betwen the old 

261 - 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


organization or outward form, and the ever ex- 
panding experience of men takes place natu- 
rally with little or no struggle or friction; but _ 
more often the readjustment involves tremen- 
dous effort and many times unceasing struggle. 
The struggle that is to be witnessed everywhere 
in the world today, in our political, social, indus- 
trial, moral and religious life, may be defined as 
the struggle between the conservatives and reac- 
tionaries on the one hand, and the liberals and 
radicals on the other. But, in its deeper signifi- 
cance, it is really the struggle for readjustment 
between old organizations, forms and doctrines 
» that grew out of former experiences in the past, 
and the actual living human experience of today 
which the old organizations, forms and doctrines 
no longer adequately represent or correctly in- 
terpret. 

Our age is in the midst of a confusion of 
theories and ideals that inevitably have reacted 
on the idea of what constitutes a church. Our 
notions of the church have little to do with its. 
founding, but they are all mixed up with those 
new thoughts on individualism and collectivism, 
on the evolution of society, on the relation of 
the state to the community, and on the relation 
of the church to the community. In the English 

262 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


establishment there are views varying from that 
of Maurice, with his doctrine of the church as 
standing for the nation in its spiritual aspect, to 
that of the Anglo-Catholics who seek to resusci- 
tate the purely mediaeval view. The Protestant 
churches up until now, and even now in the 
majority of cases, have been the nurseries of in- 
dividualism. Beyond these boundaries there are 
intellectuals like Seeley who, in his “Natural 
Religion,” asks, “What then is the universal 
church but universal civilization?’ Socialism, 
too, has attempted to formulate theories, at pres- 
ent none too clear, on this important feature of 
our common life. 

It is not with these theories, however, that we 
are now concerned, but rather with the one ques- 
tion as to the relation of the church to experience. 
There can be no denying the fact that there is a 
widespread conviction that man’s religious ex- 
perience has outgrown the church, that the or- 
ganization with its doctrines and ideals, its rites 
and ceremonies, no longer either voices or satisfies 
the religious needs of men, and that, therefore, 
religion must be found elsewhere than in the 
church. As evidence of this conviction we see 
the utter indifference, if not hostility, of large 
numbers of the intellectuals to churches of all 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


kinds; and within the churches themselves we are 
witnessing the growing restlessness of “the mod- 
ernists,’ both clergy and laity, under the eccle- 
siastical and doctrinal restrictions of the institu- 
tion. | 

Mr. Stone, President of the Brotherhood of 
Locomotive Engineers, said again this last week 
what we have heard constantly -of late, that 
the Protestant churches had nothing for the 
working classes, that they cared nothing for them 
or their problems of life, and that therefore, the 
interest of the workers generally in the churches 
was steadily waning. The individualistic basis 
upon which the official creeds of Protestantism 
are all founded is utterly out of touch with the 
awakening social consciousness of the age. The 
exclusive sectarianism of Protestantism with its 
un-Christian rivalries and jealousies is an utter 
anachronism in an age whose noblest spirit is 
seeking for some kind of unity and codperation. 
The springing up of all manner of new religious 
cults, entirely apart from the churches, which are 
attracting their hundreds of thousands of ad- 
herents, is only another evidence of the failure 
of the churches to satisfy certain religious needs 
in human nature. 

But more convincing than 4ll else is the fact 

264 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


that the younger generation is growing up with 
little or no interest in the churches of its fathers. 
It is‘easy enough to say, as many do, that the 
young people of today represent “an ungodly 
generation,” and thus to throw the whole blame 
upon them that they do not flock in larger num- 
bers to our churches, but I cannot take this view. 
The young people of today are probably no bet- 
ter or worse than those of yesterday. The basic 
needs of human nature have not changed, and 
human aspiration is always the same. But the 
young men and women, educated in our schools 
and colleges of today, have learned facts about 
the universe and themselves, have gained a view- 
point on life and have caught a spirit,—all of 
which combine to give them an eawperience that 
the average church does not seem to understand, 
much less to satisfy. According to their own 
statements, the church makes no appeal to them, 
sermons leave them cold, the theological phrase- 
ology is quite meaningless, and the so-called 
“church activities” impress them as trivial and 
picayunish. And yet no one seriously doubts that 
the young people of today possess moral and spir- 
itual powers just as truly capable of development 
as they were in days gone by. 

These facts, that no one can gainsay, seem to 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


lead to but one conclusion: That however loyal 
the churches may be to experiences that were once 
real in the past, they are clearly failing to voice, 
to interpret or to satisfy the actual, living ex- 
perience, of men and women of today. The 
simple fact is that religion has outgrown the 
church as it has been,—therein lies the secret of 
the present religious situation. The religious ex- 
perience of living, growing men no longer feels 
itself at home within the old organizations of 
religion; it finds itself “‘cabined, cribbed and 
confined”? not only within the ecclesiastical and 
doctrinal restrictions, but also within the moral 
and spiritual limitations of the churches as they 
are. Any organization that fails to root itself 
in the living experience of men is of necessity out- 
grown and, sooner or later, inevitably left behind. 
There is no reason to believe that the churches 
can escape this fate,—wnless they can readjust 
themselves vitally to the experiences of modern 
men. ‘This is the critical problem that the . 
churches of Christendom are facing Just now— 
readjustment, or gradual but sure extinction, 
while some new form of organization that can 
more adequately satisfy the religious needs of the 
new age, takes their place. 

This evident failure of the churches adequately 

266 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


to meet the moral and spiritual needs of living, 
growing men and women has resulted in the feel- 
ing on the part of multitudes that religion is a 
purely personal thing after all, that churches and 
creeds, sermons and ceremonies are in no sense 
necessary to the religious life, that since “the 
kingdom of God is within” each individual, one 
can cultivate religion privately through reading 
and meditation and prayer. And thus an increas- 
ing number have fallen away from the churches 
who have in no sense abandoned religion; for 
them religion has become a private and personal 
matter. There is much to be said for this concep- 
tion of religion. Religion does indeed begin in 
the inner life; it is a matter of the personal con- 
sciousness; it involves view-points, conceptions, 
attitudes that are in a deep sense personal and 
private. John Trotwood Moore has written a 
beautiful poem, entitled. ‘The Church of the 
Heart,” that expresses most truly this conception 
of religion: 


Deep in the dales of the human heart, 
Deep in the dells of the soul, 
Where the springs of the innermost passions start, 
Where the brooks of hope and happiness part, 
And the flowers of life unfold, 
Is a temple whose vespers rise and swell, 
Yet it hath no priest and it hath no bell. 
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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


*Tis loftier far than the dome of the sky; 
"Tis deeper down than the sea; 

It catches the gleam of the stars as they fly 

And the music they make as they wander by 
With their heavenly minstrelsy. 

Music—but whence no mortal can tell— 

For it hath no priest and it hath no bell. 


No glitter of tinsel, no blight of gold, 
No fashion of rank and lies, 

No creeds in their coffined urns of old 

Where the dust lies deep on their hearts of mold; 
No altar where prides arise— 

And yet no cathedrals in beauty excel, 

Though it hath no priest and it hath no bell. 


And here hath the crushed and the desolate prayed 
From the depths of their soul’s despair; 

And hither hath sad-eyed sorrow strayed, 

And outcast Hope hath sobbed and laid 
Her head on the altar there. 

And never anathema rings their knell, 

For it hath no priest and it hath no bell. 


Oh, glorious church of the heart divine 
(Oh, science priest to us all) 
High o’er the world may your sweet dome shine, 
With your silent priest in this heart of mine, 
And the image of love on your wall. 
Oh, church of the heart, ’tis there God dwells, 
Though it hath no priests and it hath no bells. 


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RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


While we all accept gladly the truth of these 
words, do they contain all the truth? Is the 
Church of the Heart to be the only church of the 
future? Or must it not inevitably lead out to 
the visible Church of All Hearts that have awak- 
ened to the moral and spiritual meaning of life? 
In other words, while in one sense religion is, and 
must always be, profoundly personal, in another 
and deeper sense, must it not also be intensely 
social? If true religion is that power, or that 
experience, that brings together and binds to- 
gether, as the word, religio, etymologically 
means, how can “the religion of the heart” fail 
to bring us together with all other hearts? If we 
are indeed all ‘“‘members one of another,” then 
true gratitude is a gratitude given together, true 
worship is the lifting up of the common heart 
together, true service is the service we give to- 
gether, the true life is the life we live together, in 
conscious fellowship and coéperation. -Real re- 
ligion must begin in the heart, but it never ends 
there. To realize its highest and best it must be 
brought into closest contact with the religion of 
other hearts and made to feel and know the spir- 
itual unity that binds all men and women into 
one true brotherhood of aspiring and serving 
souls. 

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IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Our problem then is not that of a religion that 
has outgrown all forms of organization. In some 
far off day, religion may succeed in so ethicizing 
and spiritualizing man’s life that it may indeed 
become “one with civilization,” but that time is 
not yet. The church is not an end in itself, but 
a means to anend. The end it seeks is the King- 
dom of God established here on this earth. Until 
that end is achieved there must be the organiza- 
tion of religion as well as the religion of the 
heart. ‘The only question is, what kind of organ- 
ization shall we have? All indications point to 
the fact that our present organizations of religion 
are increasingly out of touch with living human 
experience in its mental, moral and spiritual 
needs. ‘The only church then, that can survive 
into the future is one that can more adequately 
voice and interpret and satisfy the religious needs 
of this age. If such a church does not now exist, 
can it be created? ‘The motives that lie back of 
the Community Church movement sprang from 
the desire and purpose to create just such a 
church. In how far has this movement succeeded 
in meeting this critical need? In reply to these 
questions I want to attempt the daring task of 
outlining the kind of church that religion will not 

270 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


outgrow, simply because it will be related vitally 
to the living experience of men and women. 

It is clear that out of the common, universal 
experience of men there emerged three funda- 
mental religious needs, and that these needs have 
nothing necessarily to do with theology as such, 
_ with the rites and ceremonies of ecclesiasticism, 
or even with the Bible and its inspirations; the 
sources of these needs lie deep within human 
nature itself; and since it was these needs that 
originally created religion and all forms of its 
_ organization, it is these needs today that have 
the power to recreate religion and re-fashion new 
forms more adequate to its expression. ‘These 
three universal needs may be defined as follows: 
(1) The need of a living faith in the ideal things 
of life; (2) The need of reflection on the meaning 
of our experience with the ideal things; and (3) 
The need of devoted service in the realization of 
_ these ideals. 

The church, then, that is vitally related to liv- 
ing human experience must minister adequately 
to these three human needs, or to put it into other 
words, it must seek to satisfy the religious needs 
of men along the three fundamental lines of feel- 
ing, thinking and acting. First of all, then, the 

271 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


church that religion will not and cannot outgrow 
is the church that is able. 

1. To inspire and strengthen a living faith in 
the ideal things. It is aman’s grasp on the ideal 
things that alone gives permanence and value to 
his existence, and every man knows this to be 
true. We live our lives in a material universe, we 
ourselves are housed in physical bodies, and yet 
we know that the meaning and beauty and sig- 
nificance of our lives proceed not alone from 
those things that we see and hear and touch 
through our senses, but, still more, from those 
intangible things of faith and hope and love and 
aspiration. Wiaithout these, life is 


“A tale told by an idiot, 
Full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing.” 


But in the world of things in which we are so 
constantly immersed and enmeshed, it is the com- 
mon experience with us all that faith loses its 
vision, and hope burns dim, and love is disillu- 
sioned, and aspiration falters, and “we stretch 
lame hands” to regain once more those priceless 
treasures of which the world of things has seem- 
ingly robbed us. How shall we catch again the 
vision we have lost? Where shall we regain our 
272 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


faith in the ideal values of life? It is this pro- 
found and universal need that the real church 
should meet and satisfy. But how? 

One answer has been, through worship as men 
come together in some common religious meeting- 
place. This answer is still true, provided we 
clearly understand what is meant by worship. In 
the life of primitive man worship began in the 
attempt either to placate the wrath of some god 
or gods, or else in the endeavor to win their favor, 
It is also true that the forms of worship as em- 
ployed in both Catholic and Protestant churches 
today imply, to a greater or less degree, the ideas 
of primitive man. Such ideas of God are utterly 
impossible to intelligent people today, and for 
this reason the conventional forms of worship are 
either meaningless or repugnant to most thinking 
people. 

But there is a meaning in worship that has not 
been outgrown. [I like to use another word that 

does not suggest the old false meanings in “wor- 
' ship”’—the word, reverence. It is an attitude 
that one takes toward life and his fellows, or more 
accurately, an attitude one may take toward the 
ideal possibilities of life and his fellows. It is a 
moral and spiritual reaching out to something 
above oneself, something that les beyond present 

273 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


attainments; it is aspiration at its highest and 
best. One may call the objects of aspiration, 
Truth, or Goodness, or Beauty, or the Infinite, 
or the Moral Values of Life, or by the familiar 
word, God, that gathers up in itself the best we 
know and the highest we feel. ‘The name does 
not matter, but the attitude is profoundly essen- 
tial. 

Coupled with this faith in the Highest, there 
is the still deeper need of a faith in ourselves and 
in our capacities to achieve the highest. This at- 
titude of reverence toward “‘the Highest,” which 
is the soul of true worship, springs from the pro- 
found feeling side of our natures; it lies deeper 
than words or definitions, than formulas or dog- 
mas. It leads to a sense of dependency on others; 
it awakens the consciousness of our essential unity 
with all of life; it brings peace and quiet joy into 
one’s inner life. It is difficult to describe apart 
from terms of feeling, of consciousness, of some- 
thing that is felt and sensed within. But the 
sum total of the effect is to make real the things 
of the ideal realm, or as Felix Adler puts it, “the | 
growing conviction and the clearer vision of the 
eternal spiritual universe as real.” 

What are the means by which these feelings of 
reverence for the ideal things are to be inspired 

274 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


and strengthened? ‘The answer involves the 
whole question of the place of symbolism in re- 
ligion. We have the ritualistic churches with 
their elaborate liturgical services on one hand, 
and then we have the service of the Ethical Cul- 
ture Society, which consists simply of brief read- 
ings, instrumental music and the address. It 
is this problem that Dr. Guthrie is seeking to 
meet down at St. Mark’s Church, New York, in 
his experiments with different colored lights, with 
special music, and with the eurythmic dances. 
In my judgment Dr. Guthrie is right in empha- 
sizing the primacy of feeling in religion; he is 
wrong in minimizing the moral and intellectual 
aspects of religion. What he is seeking is to 
awaken through the symbolism of the service the 
religious feeling and attitude. Whether he has 
found the best means to this desired end may be 
an open question. 

Thus all of the service of worship, simple or 
elaborate as it may be, is for the sake of evoking 
in us the attitude of reverence for the Highest, 
and bringing us face to face once again with the 
ideal things of life. The sermon, as the climax 
-of the service, has nothing else but this as its 
great end and aim; for unless the sermon, what- 
ever its subject may be, serves to send men and 

275 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


women back into life “with the growing convic- 
tion and the clearer vision of the eternal spiritual. 
universe as real,” it has failed of its purpose. 
This should be the ideal for every church,—that 
by every wise and legitimate means it shall be able 
to inspire and strengthen a living faith in the 
ideal things, and thus minister to the feeling side 
of religion in human nature. How far any church 
succeeds in this aim may be questioned, but this is 
the aim nevertheless, and there is always room 
for development in the experiments that are being 
made to bring the church into more vital relations 
to the living religious experience of men. 

2. The church that religion will not outgrow is 
the church that is able to lead and stimulate re- 
flection on the meaning of experience and the sig- 
nificance of the great ideals. A prominent Epis- 
copal layman said to me recently, “the difference 
between my church and yours is this: I go to 
church to feel, while people go to your church 
to think.” At first thought, I felt complimented, 
but the more I reflected on his remark the less 
certain I became. If he was right in his state- — 
ment, then both his church and ours are at fault, 
for each of us is neglecting one of the fundamen- 
tal religious needs in human nature. His church 
is minimizing the thinking side, and our church 

276 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


is neglecting the feeling side of religion; whereas 
the church vitally related to man’s living experi- 
ence would minister to both needs. 

The profound need for reflection, if religion is 
to be more than the passing mood, must be self- 
evident to all intelligent people. Every human 
experience always consists of two things: (1) 
the outward event or circumstance, and (2) the 
inward interpretation of the event or circum- 
stance. Nothing ever gets into us, as it were, 
from the outside, or becomes an actual part of 
our own “experience,” until we have put our in- 
ward interpretation upon it. “This power to 
transform facts so that they will be no longer 
merely facts, but facts plus an interpretation, 
is one of the most distinctive and significant ele- 
ments in human life. The. animals do not pos- 
sess it. An event befalls a dog and, when the 
dog is through with it, the event is what it was 
before. The dog has done nothing to it. But 
the same event befalls a man and at once some- 
thing begins to happen to it. It is clothed in 
a man’s thought about it; it is surrounded with 
his appreciation and understanding; it is trans- 
formed by his interpretations. ‘The event comes 
out of that man’s life something altogether dif- 
ferent from what it was when it went in. For 

277 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


our experiences do not fall into our lives in 
single lumps, like meteors from a distant sky 
of fate; our experiences always are made up of 
the fortunes that befall us and the construction 
that we put upon them, on the facts as we come 
to know them and the interpretations that we 
put upon those facts.” } 

It is just here that we realize the need of 
reflection in religion for it is through reflection 
alone that we discover the interpretation of facts 
or events and their bearing on our lives and 
the life of society. On its thinking side, religion 
has always sought to bring man the interpreta- 
tion of the facts of life in moral and spiritual 
terms. ‘This is one of the fundamental needs 
of human existence. The reason that religion 
has persisted down through the centuries is be- 
cause, constituted as he is, man is not content 
to live in a universe of uninterpreted facts. Men 
want to know what life means spiritually; they 
want to know that “it means intensely and means 
good.” The demand, therefore, is for a church 
that can lead and stimulate reflection on the 
meaning of the facts of life. Never was this 
demand greater or more insistent than today. 
The world has been flooded with new knowledge 
about everything—from stars to stones, from 

278 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


amoeba to man. And yet, as Professor Robin- 
son points out, this vast accumulation of facts 
by modern science is not yet correlated or co- 
ordinated; it is tucked away in all sorts of tech- 
nical books, scientific magazines, laboratories of 
universities, etc., so that the average man either 
cannot, or does not know how to get at it. And 
when Professor Robinson pleads for the human- 
ization of knowledge, he is demanding the in- 
terpretation and meaning of all this new knowl- 
edge and, its bearing upon human life. We 
have the facts today, or at least the facts are 
available, that might make a new heaven and 
a new earth, but how many are there as yet who 
really see and understand the full significance 
of all these new facts for human life, and espe- 
cially, for man’s moral and spiritual develop- 
ment? 

Greater than all else is the need for a fresh 
and living interpretation of the moral ideals of 
life, and still more, for a clear and definite ex- 
planation of how they can be applied not only 
to the individual life but also to the social, eco- 
‘nomic, industrial and international relations of 
men and of nations. What is the “good life’? 
What does it mean, in this age, to live the good 
life? How many can answer intelligently these 

279 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


questions? And yet, upon our answers depends 
our own moral development, as well as the moral 
and spiritual values of civilization. Is not the 
muddled condition of affairs everywhere due, 
more than all else, to ignorance of the real mean- 
ing of goodness, of righteousness, of justice, and 
of love in terms of today’s life, and the lack of 
any clear knowledge as to how these ideals can, 
or should be translated into the manifold re- 
lations of man’s life in this modern age? It is 
upon these things that we must begin to reflect 
in dead earnest, if we are ever to solve aright 
our pressing and critical problems. 

The interpretations and meanings of life as 
they are taught by the average church are based 
upon conceptions of the universe and of life, 
of human nature and of human relationships that 
the facts of modern science have utterly dis- 
proved, with the result that men and women of 
this generation who have been taught the facts of 
modern science and who then turn to the church - 
for the moral and spiritual interpretations of 
these facts are met with a denial of the facts; 
and it is no wonder that they turn away in dis- 
gust from religious interpretations and mean- 
ings that they know are based not upon fact but 
upon fiction or merest superstition. Still, for 

280 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


all such, the imperious demand of human nature 
remains unchanged—a real need, yes, and a hun- 
ger, too, for a reasonable interpretation of all 
this accumulation of new knowledge in terms 
of the moral and spiritual life of man. Here 
lies the great duty as well as the challenging 
opportunity for the church that is vitally re- 
lated to living human experience. The church 
that can help men think reflectively on the mean- 
ing of life’s experiences, and that can lead men 
in a reasonable interpretation of the available 
facts of life in their moral and spiritual bearing 
is the church that religion will never outgrow. 
For example, here are the facts of Biblical 
scholarship as respects the Bible,—who wrote its 
various books, when they were written, to whom 
they were written, with what purpose, its his- 
torical mistakes, its discrepancies, etc. If we 
accept these facts of scholarship we must give 
over entirely all conception of an infallibly in- 
spired book, as held by the fundamentalists. But 
the questions still remain: What does the Bible 
mean? Has it any truth for my life? Can I 
still derive any help or inspiration from its pages, 
and if so, how? . 
Or take the doctrine of evolution. We may 
search out all the facts, and become familiar with 
281 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


all the lines of evidence, and as a result we may 
become firm believers in the law of evolution. 
But the question still remains: What does this 
law mean for human life? Does it mean what 
Herbert Spencer and others in the last part of 
the nineteenth century thought it meant,—that 
some impersonal power called “evolution” was 
going to carry man steadily on toward the mil- 
lennium, whether or no, regardless of what man 
did or did not do? Does it mean that we may 
trace this stupendous process going on from the 
beginning of time in obedience to mechanical laws 
merely, with no purpose, no meaning, no ob- 
jective goal? Does it mean that man is only the 
last product of this mechanical process and that, 
therefore, human life possesses no intrinsic sig- 
nificance, and that all-man’s concern for moral 
and spiritual values is only the result of his ego- 
tistic imaginings? Does it mean that evolution 
controls man, or that man can direct evolution? 
It is one thing to know the facts of evolution, 
it is quite another thing to interpret correctly the 
deeper meaning of those facts. And how one in- 
terprets evolution has tremendous influence upon 
the incentives and motives and ideals of life. 
Or, there are the teachings of psychology which 
reduces man’s mental life to its physical basis. 
282 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


We may accept all the facts as to the part the 
nervous system plays in our feelings, our percep- 
tions, our thoughts and our acts. But the ques- 
tion still remains: What do these facts mean 
for my personal life? Is my mental life to be 
identified with molecular changes in the brain, 
or is it only the accompaniment of these changes? 
Is there an ego or self, or am “I” merely the 
sum total of a highly developed nervous system? 
Is my feeling, thinking, volitional life absolutely 
determined, or is there any sense in which I am 
“free”? Are all my thoughts, feelings, loves, 
hopes, aspirations, the direct products of my 
brain and nervous system, or are they conditioned 
by them? It is one thing to know the facts of 
psychology, it is a very different thing to know 
how to interpret those facts aright; and there are 
today wide differences of opinion as to how they 
should be interpreted. But what these facts 
mean to me cannot fail to have tremendous in- 
fluence upon what life means to me, and Me 
what I seek to do with my life. 

Or, we may take the facts of sree social 
and world conditions, so far as we are able to get 
the correct facts. Still the question remains: 
What do these facts mean? What is their sig- 
nificance? What do they portend for the future? 

283 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


We may interpret these facts solely in terms of 
pessimism, cynicism and despair; we may see 
no hope of ever “changing human nature” and, 
therefore, no hope of ever achieving a better 
world for men. Or we may see in the present 
social upheavals, in the breakdown of the po- 
litical state, in the chaotic confusion of morals 
and religion, the passing away of an old and 
outgrown form of civilization in order that the 
new and better form may be builded. The 
shadows that fill the world today may indeed 
prove to be but the darkness that precedes the 
dawning of a new and nobler day for humanity. 
Whichever view we take cannot help but have 
a tremendous influence upon the part we play 
and the efforts we put forth in changing con- 
ditions that are, to conditions that ought to be. 
3. The church that religion will not outgrow 
is the church that is able to lead men out into 
practical and intelligent forms of hwman service, — 
and thus lead towards the realization of the ideal 
things. There is only one supreme test of re- 
ligion. It is not the depths of feeling that may 
be awakened in us by the beauty of any church 
service; neither is it the thought that may be 
stirred by any sermon; it is only when we take 
the feeling and the thought that have been 
284 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


aroused and translate them resolutely into defi- 
nite, concrete forms of service to our fellows that 
we become truly religious. Only as we act are 
we religious; all else is merely preliminary,— 
the means to the end, and that end—the life of 
service to others. Merely to attend church, to 
have one’s feelings touched, or one’s mind stirred, 
and then, not to do,—anything, is from the psy- 
chological view-point a crime against one’s self, 
since the law for feeling and thought is that they 
must be translated into action; from the re- 
ligious view-point it is nothing more than a kind 
of spiritual debauch which leaves us vastly worse 
off than we were before. , 

It is at this point, perhaps, more than at any 
other, that the churches fail to lead. When 
thought and feeling are stirred it is the natural 
thing for human beings to turn to action, but 
usually there is a wide gap between the ideals 
and teachings of the pulpit and the way in which 
these are to be applied in definite and concrete 
forms. It is so easy to picture conditions as they 
are; it is comparatively easy to describe condi- 
tions as they ought to be. But the most difficult 
thing of all is to tell people just what they can 
do to change conditions for the better. The ten- 
dency for most sermons is to describe conditions 

285 





IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


or picture the ideals in glowing terms, and then 
to taper off into general statements that are true 
and beautiful enough, but that leave the con- 
gregation, as it were, in mid-air, dangling be- 
tween heaven and earth. Such sermons end at 
just the point where they ought to begin; how- 
ever high into the heaven of ideals a sermon may 
take one, it ought always to finish on the earth. 
I cannot escape the feeling that every sermon 
ought to begin its last paragraph with some 
such words as these: “And now, after all that 
has been said, what are we going to do about it?” 

The most truly effective sermons are those that 
point the way most directly toward some kind 
of concrete action. The real test as to whether 
a sermon has helped us is whether it sends us 
out into the world to be different, and to do 
definitely for others in some helpful way. 

It is thus that I would answer the challenge 
contained in Dr. Dewey’s question, What is the 
relation of the church to religious experience? 
The church must spring out of the actual living 
experience of today. It must voice and interpret 
and satisfy the religious needs of human nature. 
To that end, the only church that religion will 
not outgrow will be the church that knows how 
to inspire and strengthen a living faith in the 

286 


RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 


ideal things, that is able to lead and stimulate 
reflection on the meaning of the experiences of 
life, and that has the power and intelligence to 
lead men out into the practical realization of the 
ideals through concrete forms of service to hu- 
manity. 

To build that true church of God and man 
is our supreme opportunity. It is John Brierley 
who says: “More and more clearly do we see 
that the Church of the future will be a free com- 
munity of souls, in whom the full powers of 
personality will be developed, whose government 
will be from within and not without, where the 
mind’s freedom will be a willing subjection to 
the laws of highest thinking, and the soul’s lib- 
erty that of joyous obedience to the law of love.” 


287 


XI 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS: 


THE WAY TO BROTHERHOOD 






Wis gee|N John Galsworthy’s well-known play, 
vx pee entitled “Strife,” we have set before 

4] @iG| us the last stages of a long strike that 
Sa) has taken place in the Trenartha Tin 
Plate Works. The chief action of the play re- 
volves around a series of conferences held be- 
tween the Directors of the Company and a Com- 
mittee of the workmen. In the course of the 
conferences the results of the long-drawn-out 
fight are made clearly plain. The workmen have 
been reduced to absolute want, and their fam- 
ilies—women and little children—are on the 
verge of starvation and suffering from the cold 
of a severe winter; many of them are sick as 
the direct result of their deprivations caused by 
the strike. ‘The Company has lost fifty thousand 
pounds and the stockholders are clamoring for 
dividends; besides, competitors are cutting into 
the business seriously. The Chairman of the 
288 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


Board holds out doggedly for his policy of a 
fight to the finish. He presents all the old stock 
arguments why the demands of the workers must 
be refused, no matter what the cost to the Com- 
pany or to the men and their families. The 
Chairman of the workmen’s committee, on the 
other hand, refuses on behalf of the men to con- 
cede a single item in their demands. And thus 
the struggle comes once again to a deadlock, 
with the feeling of bitterness inflamed on both 
sides. 

Just as this crisis has been reached, the news 
comes of the death of the wife of Roberts, the 
Chairman of the workmen’s committee, from 
starvation and cold. In the revulsion of feeling 
that follows, both groups brush their respective 
leaders aside and come to terms, and the strike 
is settled. A moment later the secretary of the 
Board turns to the Trades Union official and 
says excitedly, “Do you know, sir—these terms, 
they’re the very same we drew up together, you 
and I, and put to both sides: before the fight be- 
gan? All this—all this—a woman dead, and the 
two best men broken—and—and what for?” 

_ These last words of the play reveal with start- 

‘ling clearness the true meaning of all strife, what- 

ever form it may take, with its tragic waste both 
289 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


material and spiritual—its losses that can never 
be made good. As the play makes clear, in every 
form of human strife there are always strong con- 
victions on both sides—convictions made up of 
many elements—ideas, opinions, beliefs, so-called 
“principles,” and these, all bound together by 
personal or partisan feelings; neither side willing 
to concede an inch, each holding out obstinately 
for the letter of the law and forgetting its spirit. 
And in all such strife, whether individual or in- 
dustrial or international, does not reflection make 
us feel that a little more of the spirit of humanity, 
a little deeper understanding of the other side, 
a little less insistence on individual or collective 
rights in view of human duties, a little willing- 
ness to forgive and forget, in short, just an influx 
of human kindliness with the temper of heart 
' and mind which it creates, would do more to 
banish our differences, to dissolve our prejudices, 
to bring our divided humanity together in the 
spirit of codperation and fellowship, than any- 
thing else in all the world? 

My plea, therefore, is for more of kindliness in - 
all our human relations, if we are ever going to 
solve our great and complex problems. This does 
not mean that I would disparage by a single iota 
the need of convictions in the tasks that lie before 

290 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


us. It is not less, but vastly more conviction 
that is needed, but conviction clarified, broad- 
ened, deepened and brought into harmony with 
all the facts. We do assuredly need “more 
mind,” that shall consist of a quickened intelli- 
gence far wider and better adapted to the prob- 
lems we confront, with all their many implica- 
tions and their far-reaching significance. But 
convictions, ideas, beliefs, however true they may 
be, can never become effective and will never 
lead to brotherhood unless they are suffused, 
permeated and vitalized by the spirit of human 
kindliness. It is convictions and kindliness, then, 
for which I plead, if we are to build that better 
world for which we yearn. 

This is in no sense a new message; it is as old 
as religion. Every great prophet of religion has 
always laid the supreme emphasis upon love as 
the summum bonum of life. Jesus of Nazareth 
summed up the teachings of both the law and the 
prophets in the one word, love, and many of his 
followers have indeed enshrined love in the cen- 
tral citadel of their lives. St. Francis of Assisi, 
who has been called the most Christ-like man 
after Jesus, was the “slave of love.’’ He lived 
as nearly the selfless life as we can conceive; his 
love went forth freely to all men and women and 

291 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


little children, and even to the beasts of the field 
and the birds of the air. His entire life was 
devoted to service for others. But St. Francis 
lived at a time when no man dared to believe that 
this world, as such, could be made any better. 
The world belonged to the Devil and in due 
time was bound to go to destruction; only the 
few within the Church would be saved. No one 
disputes the fact that St. Francis lived a beauti- 
ful and useful life, and his character has been, 
and is, an inspiration to countless others as an 
example of the way in which love can control and 
banish the selfish impulses of human nature. 
But because of the limitations of his age, St. 
Francis never dreamed that the world itself could 
be saved. He had no convictions that society 
could ever be transformed. He knew nothing 
about social theory and he never formulated a 
social program. He knew the secret of kindli- 
ness, but he knew nothing of the forces and 
factors that made society what it was, much less 
could he have conceived of any method or tech- 
nique whereby they could be moulded and di- . 
rected to higher ends. His love was a beautiful 
and an admirable thing, but it was shorn of its 
power in bringing to realization human brother- 
hood, because it lacked the other thing needed— 
292 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


the vision, the ideas, the convictions as to how 
the great end could be achieved. 

This makes clear why organized religion has 
failed, up to the present, in the realization of 
human brotherhood. When we remember that 
social religion, in the sense that we use those 
words today, is a comparatively recent thing, 
and that the conviction that it is the business 
of religion to transform human society and not 
simply “to save” a few individual lives and see 
them safely through this wicked world to some 
distant heaven of bliss, has only just begun to 
grip some of the churches, and that, even now, 
our fundamentalist friends in all the churches 
still firmly believe that this is the Devil’s world 
and can never be made any better, we can under- 
stand why human brotherhood still seems to 
tarry in the far distance. 

Organized religion, to be sure, has professed 
to preach a Gospel of Love down through the 
centuries, but not always consistently; it has 
been so mixed up with a dogmatic teaching of 
creeds that always divide and of a sectarianism 
that inevitably separates, that its power has been 
largely vitiated. But it is even more clear today 
that unless love is translated into its social terms, 
unless we know what it means “to love our 

293 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


neighbor as ourselves’’ in a society like ours, un- 
less the “love” that religion prescribes is applied 
intelligently to all the manifold relations of life, 
it tends to become merely a sentimental thing 
without depth or meaning. When we speak, 
therefore, of the “failure of organized religion,” 
what we mean is that the churches have been long 
on talking about love, but short on practising it 
and, especially, in applying it to social relation- 
ships. In a word, organized religion has believed 
in love as a beautiful sentiment, at least in theory, 
but it has lacked the other thing—the vision, the 
ideas, the intelligence, the convictions as to how 
the principle of love could be translated into the 
life of society. Hence its failure to realize hu- 
man brotherhood. 

But if organized religion with its teachings of 
love has failed to transform society and usher in 
the brotherhood of man because it has never yet 
combined with its love the intelligent convictions 
as to how love might be made the basic principle 
for the reorganization of society, it is just as - 
true that, again and again, the enunciation of 
clear and sound convictions as to what might 
be done to gain a better world have failed of 
fulfilment simply because the spirit of love to 

294 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


make them effective has been lacking in the hearts 
and minds of men. 

In 1795 Immanuel Kant published his famous 
essay on “Perpetual Peace.” As Edwin D. 
Mead says: “Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual 
Peace,’ and his collateral writings, are the Magna 
Charta, the Declaration of Independence of the 
International World, its independence of that 
militarism, imperialism, and “bastard patriotism’ 
which constitute the original sin of nations and 
have kept mankind in hate, fear, suspicion, jeal- 
ousy and eternal war. ... Kant showed the 
world a century before Edith Cavell died for 
the truth, that ‘patriotism’ is not enough! He 
showed us, a century before Goldwin Smith de- 
clared it, that ‘above all nations is humanity,’ 
and that any statesman who does not make that 
principle the corner-stone of his policy is doomed 
to certain failure. The follies of a whole gen- 
eration of Treitschkes and Bernhardis had been 
exposed and undermined in advance by Ger- 
many’s own greatest thinker as by no other, 
showing for all who cared to understand, where 
militarism and absolutism inevitably lead; and 
his words are still written on the sky for all who 
will heed them.” 

As a reasonable and practical statement of 

295 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


principles that would make for world peace, most 
intelligent people would accept Kant’s program. 
But as Kant himself proved in the Critique of 
Pure Reason, the rational by no means exhausts 
the whole man. The difficulty comes when we 
remember how many irrational factors there are 
in human nature—selfishness, greed, short- 
sightedness, inhumanity, etc., impulses and mo- 
tives that cut directly across reason and logic. 
If we are ever to secure world peace the reason- 
able and logical principles must be combined with 
an intelligent technique adapted to the condi- 
tions of the age; but beyond these conditions 
there must be the awakening and education of 
the moral nature in man to the point where 
it is able to control all the lower impulses in men 
and nations, and thus furnish the great dynamic 
of kindliness and good-will that must find ex- 
pression if the principles that make for peace 
are to be effective. This is only an illustration 
of the ineffectiveness of sound convictions or true 
principles, simply because the atmosphere of . 
kindliness in which alone they can be put into 
execution is absent. ‘This is the reason that so 
many of our present-day convictions as to the 
way to peace fall short of realization; the will 
to make them effective is wanting because that 
296 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


temper of mind and heart in men and nations 
that we call kindliness seems to have vanished 
strangely from our life. 

It certainly needs no fresh arguments to prove 
that kindliness on the part of men and nations is 
the greatest need of our age? Of “convictions,” 
both true and false, we have enough and to spare. 
We are printing them in countless books and 
papers; we are talking them continuously from 
pulpit and platform; we are arguing, debating, 
discussing them on every street corner; we are 
shouting our particular shibboleths from the 
housetops; we enter into controversy with almost 
everyone we meet. But with all our ideas, be- 
hefs, convictions, we seem to get no whither. 
We walk around in circles and come back to 
the place we started. Our “convictions” do not 
seem “to get across’ to others; we persuade few 
and convince none; and as a result, progress 
Jags in all directions. What is the trouble? 
When you ask someone the question he shakes 
his head mournfully and replies, “I don’t know. 
It’s a strange age we are living in. It’s talk, 
talk, talk—argue, argue, argue—but nothing 
doing ; the springs of action seem to be paralyzed 
at their source.” 

But there is a simpler answer. You remember 

297 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture. He 
called it the combination of “sweetness and 
light”—the light of clear, full knowledge plus 
the temper of good-will, the disposition of kindli- 
ness. When John Galsworthy was in this coun- 
try the last time, in one of his public addresses 
he said that the trouble with this age was that 
we had forgotten to be gentlemén, we had lost 
the art of simple courtesy, we no longer knew 
how to be considerate of others, much less of 
their opinions. He said we were, often all un- 
consciously, rough, brutal, impatient, intolerant, 
cruel, in what we did to others and what we said 
about others; we no longer regarded gentleness as 
a virtue; and as a result, we were losing all those 
finer qualities of character that make the true 
gentleman or gentlewoman. Sir Rabindranath | 
Tagore, the poet-philosopher of India, who re- 
cently visited in Milan, is reported to have told 
thee Italians that Europe is troubled by a lack 
of love, that peace is something spiritual that 
grows in the heart and cannot be forced by com- | 
mand. At Turin his arrival was anticipated with 
much joy, but the people were bitterly disap- 
pointed when told by the authorities that he 
would not be allowed to speak because his doc- 
trines smacked of Communism. 
298 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


Bertrand Russell, who combines in a marked 
degree those qualities of culture which Matthew 
Arnold called “sweetness and light,” sums it all 
up in his “Icarus,” where he says: “Science has 
not given men more self-control, more kindliness, 
or more power of discounting their passions in 
deciding upon a course of action. It has given 
communities more power to indulge their collec- 
tive passions. . . . The heart is as important as 
the head. By the ‘heart’ I mean for the moment, 
the sum-total of kindly impulses. Where they 
exist, science helps them to be effective; where 
they are absent, science only makes men more 
cleverly diabolic. . . . And so we come back to 
the old solution: only kindliness can save the 
world.” 

These are not the words of a sentimental re- 
ligionist, but of a hard-headed philosopher who 
has given the world many books in which he 
emphasizes the “conviction” side of our present- 
day problems. He has striven as earnestly as 
anyone for the “light,” the knowledge, the tech- 
nique that may make possible the realization of 
‘a larger measure of brotherhood in this world. 
But when he has given us all his opinions and 
theories, he comes back to the conclusion, that 
“only kindliness can save the world.” 

299 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


Are these men right in their attempts to diag- 
nose the malady of our age? Is the lack of love, 
the absence of kindliness, the really fundamental 
obstacle to progress toward peace and fellow- 
ship? Let us think for a moment. The very 
word, love, has well-nigh lost its great meaning 
for this age. The war drove it out of most pul- 
pits and banished it from most human hearts. 
To the majority of people it has been narrowed to 
the sphere of the home and the family. It is 
treason to speak of loving one’s enemies; it is 
disgraceful to talk of love for those of another 
race; one loses standing if he looks with loving 
interest upon those of another class. ‘To use the 
word love in connection with statesmen and rul- 
ers, or with the life of nations, or in regard to 
international readjustments, brings the smile of 
scorn to the lip, or condemns one, as in the case 
of Tagore, as a Communist. The word love 
no longer has a respectable standing in the larger 
life of men. Very few of us still believe in love 
as “the greatest thing in the world.” 

We do, however, cherish our “convictions” — 
often with a vengeance—whether as conserva- 
tives or radicals, laborites or capitalists, repub- 
licans, democrats, socialists or communists, fun- 
damentalists or modernists; but, in all our varied 

300 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


partisanships we talk and argue and often fairly 
shout our convictions in anything but the spirit 
of kindliness. We carry our convictions as if 
they were chips on our shoulders, and we strut 
around defying others to knock them off. In like 
manner we regard the convictions of others, who 
may differ from us, as chips which we must 
knock off. We seldom argue a question solely 
on its merits, but we tend to become personal 
and soon begin heaping abuse upon individuals. 
We find it hard even to talk about peace with- 
out becoming belligerent in our pacifism. A hos- 
tile note creeps into all our discussions. We 
become suspicious of others; and we end by 
questioning the sincerity of all those who do not 
agree with us. 

We are consumed by a social discontent, but 
as Glenn Frank has remarked recently, we shall 
never get anywhere until our social discontent 
becomes a scientific discontent. His meaning be- 
comes clear when we remember that the wrongs 
of today are not so much due to individuals as 
to institutions. So long as we are satisfied to 
remain merely “socially discontent,” our discon- 
tent is pretty apt to vent itself in personal spleen 
and abuse of those whom we regard as responsible 
for the injustices of society. This spirit, in turn, 

301 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


reacts on the one who harbors it, creating bitter- 
ness of heart and anger of mind against individ- 
uals as such, and by just that much, blinding 
one’s eyes to the real question at issue. 

When we begin to see, however, that the actual 
trouble lies in the maladjustments of our form 
of civilization, of which all individuals are the 
victims, and that the only solution of the prob- 
lems involved lies in a scientific approach to these 
problems—in a disinterested and dispassionate 
attempt to find out what is wrong, why it is 
wrong, and how the wrong can best be righted in 
justice to all, then our bitterness and anger dis- 
appear in the earnest and intelligent effort to 
solve the problems scientifically. It is the differ- 
ence between the man whose car breaks down 
and who is content to walk around it and talk 
loud and angrily about the accident, the loss of 
time, inconvenience, etc., and the mechanic at 
the garage, who doesn’t lose his temper but 
quietly crawls under the car, finds out what is 
the matter, makes the proper adjustment and 
then starts it running again. Social discontent, 
for the most pert, is talking loud, getting angry 
and heaping abuse upon people, while scientific 
discontent is studying the problem presented and 
then finding the best solution, but keeping your 

302 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


temper meanwhile. It is the difference between 
trying to solve our social problems in the spirit 
of kindliness, or in the spirit of hostility, of bitter- 
ness and of anger; and today, it is this last spirit, 
unfortunately, that for the most part governs 
our lives. 

The influence of kindliness in the adjustment 
of all our human relationships must be self- 
evident to all. It is kindliness alone that creates 
the atmosphere in which prejudices are overcome, 
misunderstandings are dissolved, differences are 
adjusted and agreements are reached. Even 
more important, kindliness brings the best in 
human nature to the surface and gives it a chance 
to find expression, in spite of all the selfishness 
and greed to which we are prone. How many 
times in a group of angry, prejudiced people, one 
kindly person, with patience and tact, has been 
able to bring harmony out of discord and thus 
achieve desired results! The numerous confer- 
ences held since the war between the representa- 
tives of the nations have seemed to yield little 
_or nothing in the way of harmony and peace, 
but it is not inconceivable that some day these 
representatives may come together in a kindlier 
atmosphere, and that then worth-while and far- 
reaching decisions may be made. 

303 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


But again, kindliness is the power that breaks 
down opposition. Bertrand Russell suggests 
that if M. Poincaré had taken a kindly attitude 
toward the Ruhr miners, Lord Curzon to the 
Indian Nationalists, Mr. Smuts to the natives 
of what was German South West Africa, or 
the American Government to its political pris- 
oners, the world might be leagues nearer to peace 
and brotherhood than it is today. As we look 
back upon subsequent events, it is not difficult 
to visualize a very different kind of Peace Con- 
ference than the one that sat at Versailles. We 
can, at least, imagine a Conference, in possession 
of all the facts, that shouid have sought in the 
spirit of kindliness to heal the open wounds of 
war, to do justice to all the peoples, great and 
small, and to pave the way for a United States 
of Europe. Do you think that if this had been 
the atmosphere at Versailles, we should be facing 
the conditions that exist in Kurope today? The 
opposition and bitternesses and hatreds we now 
face would have long since vanished. You say, 
“that is too much to expect of human nature, 
especially of political states.” Perhaps, and yet 
if Bertrand Russell is right, it is only kindliness 
exercised by nations in their dealings with each 
other that will ever save the world. It must come 

304 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


some day, but it will only come when the moral 
evolution of men and nations has gone much 
farther than at present. 

But lastly, it is kindliness that furnishes the 
dynamic without which the will to achieve is 
powerless. We have our convictions, our ideals, 
our theories, yes, and our practical programs too 
—but we seem to be able to push them just so 
far and then they stick at something, and we 
fail of achievement. I venture to think that we 
have, all about us today, sufficient conviction and 
intelligence to take the first steps, at least, to- 
ward peace and world reorganization, and I dare 
to believe that there are enough men and women 
in all the countries who are ready for these first 
steps and eager to put them into effect. But 
here is the difficulty: The really progressive 
people in all lands are not united; they are sep- 
arated by so many things—race, religion, party, 
class, etc. If on occasion a few of us do manage 
to get together, we immediately begin falling out 
among ourselves over what is usually some mere 
‘technicality that has little to do with the main 
issue. And so our dreams come to naught. If 
there were more of kindliness in our hearts and 
in our personal attitude to one another, we would 
minimize our differences instead of magnifying 

305 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


them as we do now, and together we might in- 
deed proceed to translate our fundamental con- 
victions into action. It is “the propulsive power 
of a new affection” that the world needs most 
today, that will lift us out of the “rough, brutal, 
intolerant, inhumane” state into. which John 
Galsworthy says we have fallen, and then flood 
our lives with the temper of kindliness in our 
attitude toward all mankind. 

Let me illustrate briefly the way this spirit ha 
worked in human history whenever it has been 
given a chance. In the old Russia, we know 
the attitude taken by the government toward 
the progressive and radical thinkers. It was the 
policy of suppression and repression; it involved 
the spy system, imprisonment, Siberia, death. 
This policy—the opposite of kindliness—led di- 
rectly to the revolution of 1905. No one ques- 
tions but that it was responsible for the form 
that the revolution took in Russia in 1918. The 
iron-hand policy of the Russian Government 
through many years had aroused an opposition, 
engendered a bitterness and created a hatred in 
the hearts of the people that waited only the 
opportunity to revenge itself on the oppressor. 
And when the time was ripe, the outraged victims 
of such intolerable tyranny struck back and de- 

306 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


stroyed the old régime root and branch. The 
old government knew no kindliness for the 
people, and Russia today is paying the penalty 
for the past of cruelty and wrong. 

Take England, on the other hand. During 
the same period the growing power of labor in 
England was bringing that country steadily 
nearer to revolution. But in accordance with her 
long-established policy of toleration, there was 
little or no disturbance, no attempt at ruthless 
repression, no wholesale arrests or imprison- 
ments. And when the revolution came and Ram- 
say MacDonald, with his labor cabinet, took over 
the reins of government of the British Empire, 
there was no disorder, not a drop of blood was 
shed, and the conservatives gracefully accepted 
this radical change in the ordering of their na- 
tional affairs. In England, at least in its home 
policy, we have a good illustration of the way 
_ in which great and radical changes in political 
and social life can be brought about without force 
or violence, through a certain kindliness of tem- 
per manifested by both sides to the peaceful 
struggle. 

The opium conferences held in the fall of 1924 
at Geneva furnish another illustration of the 
need of just human kindliness in the solution 

307 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


of such moral problems in the world’s life. As 
we followed the proceedings of these conferences 
in the papers we noted how the first conference 
ended in a deadlock, and how the second con- 
ference that opened January 12th at first faced 
the same deadlock again. At the first confer- 
ence, with England, France, Holland and Por- 
tugal all saying that they couldn’t possibly stop 
opium smoking in their colonies because of the 
smuggled opium from China, Japan rose up 
and showed these nations a plan which is bringing 
excellent results in Formosa, which they might 
all follow if they honestly wished to end the evil. 
The East teaching the West, and, more humili- 
ating still, appealing to the West in the name of 
all the great Christian principles, decency, hu- 
manity and fair play! 

As Ellen La Motte, writing from Geneva 
said: “The opium problem is so vast and com- 
plicated, its roots go so deep into the social, 
economic, financial and political fabric of so 
many countries, that with the best will in the 
world, it is tremendously difficult to solve. But 
without that will, it is insoluble. The first req- | 
uisite is the attitude toward drugging. As long 
as any nation, large or small, regards drugging 
as something to be continued, condoned, excused 

308 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


and defended, no progress can be made.” Note, 
the ‘first requisite is the attitude toward drug- 
ging.” This involves the human rather than the 
economic attitude, the unselfish concern for the 
well-being of men and women rather than the 
selfish motive of profit-making, in a word, it 
means the temper and spirit of kindliness on the 
part of the nations that must solve this world 
problem. 

The same principle applies to all problems 
which the nations must increasingly discuss to-— 
gether. In these coming conferences, can the 
human phase of the problems involved be put 
first and foremost? Can self-interests be subor- 
dinated to the larger interests of humanity as a 
whole? Can selfishness and greed be replaced 
by unselfishness and the spirit of kindliness? 
Back of all other questions of social theory, of 
technique and method, behind all our intellectual 
convictions of what ought to be, lie these still 
deeper questions that challenge the leaders of this 
and the coming generations. These are not new 
questions; in fact, they are so old that to many 
they seem to have lost their meaning. But old 
as they are, they are the burning questions of 
our age none the less, and we ignore them only 
at our peril. We must come to see far more 

309 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


clearly, more widely, more deeply, with “the eyes 
of the head,” but pray God! the “eyes of our 
hearts” may be opened before it is too late, that 
we may come to feel our common humanity and 
so learn the great art of being kind. 

If it is true that “only kindliness can save the 
world,” the twofold problem becomes simply this: 
Hfow can we produce kindliness in ourselves, 
and how can we awaken it in others? If we can 
answer the first, we have answered the second, 
for persistent kindliness invariably begets kind- 
liness in others, just as inhumanity begets in- 
humanity. In the long run we get what we 
give, no more, no less. How then can we de- 
velop the temper and spirit of kindliness in our- 
selves?) We must believe first of all in the pos- 
sibility of such development in ourselves and in 
all men. In a recent address Felix Adler calls 
attention to the fact that the Freudians have 
much to tell us about the subconscious but when 
they speak of things subconscious they generally 
mean the primitive things, the instinctive things, 
the things which we share with the creatures be- 
neath us in the scale of life. He then proceeds - 
to affirm his conviction that there is also present 
in the subconscious something of which the 
Freudians are not in the habit of speaking, “that 

310 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


is, a divine power—hidden, latent, apparent only 
here and there on the surface, but present in all 
men. ‘That power I call the spiritual possibility. 
And by spiritual possibility I mean definitely 
the possibility of responding to the idea of per- 
fection.” The better human world for which 
we yearn is a world in which all human beings 
will respond to the ideal of kindliness as the few 
eminent ones do now. It is our faith in the pos- 
sibility of a kindlier world that calls into being 
the latent kindliness in our own natures, and 
through us, in all with whom we come in contact. 

But on the basis of this faith we must resolve 
upon a course of rigid self-discipline. It will 
not be so easy as, Bertrand Russell rather play- 
fully suggests, through the injecting into one’s 
vein’s some substance yet to be discovered which 
will flood one’s life with benevolence toward his © 
fellows. It will only be accomplished as all the 
instinctive impulses of selfishness and greed and 
hatred are brought under subjection to the higher 
and nobler impulses of unselfishness and kindli- 
ness, so that the higher nature in us shall come 
at last to dominate the lower—that which we 
have inherited from the animal and the savage. 
_ Only thus do we become truly human; it is alone 
through such discipline that we develop our di- 

311 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


vine possibilities. To be satisfied with less than 
this, is to surrender the greatest opportunity that 
life affords—that of becoming one’s true, one’s 
ideal self. 

In “Paracelsus,” one of his earliest and yet 
one of his greatest poems, Robert Browning de- 
scribes the young man as he sets forth on his 
quest for knowledge, such knowledge as will ben- 
efit his fellow-men. Paracelsus declares that all 
the wisdom of the past has done nothing for 
mankind. Men have labored and grown famous, 
their works have multiplied, but the evils of life 
are unabated; the earth still groans in the blind 
and endless struggle with them. And so he 
aspires to know the truth that has never yet 
been discovered. At last, after long years of 
wandering and searching for the truth, he finds 
himself in a Professor’s chair in the University 
in Basel. He has attained, and yet, he has failed. 
He has done what he planned, but he is not satis- 
fied. But with his unconquerable soul, he leaves 
the University and starts out once again on the 
old quest but with new methods in pursuing it. 
And at last, an old man now, broken and dying, 
he discovers the secret which he breathes out to 

his old friend Festus. Paracelsus has devoted his 
’ Jjife to knowledge, but has left love out. And 

312 


> 


CONVICTION AND KINDLINESS 


knowledge could not satisfy his soul. It is too 
late when he comes to realize his mistake. His 
mental habits are formed. He has missed life 
where he thought he would find it. And the 
realization of how he has failed of life’s fulfill- 
ment haunts him in his delirium on his death 
bed. And the secret Paracelsus discovered, and 
what Browning is trying to say in this drama, 
is Just this: Not knowledge alone, nor love alone; 
but knowledge and love reveal the deepest secrets 
of existence and lead one’s life to the highest. 

It is only the poet’s way of saying that not 
conviction alone, nor kindliness alone, but ever 
and only, conviction and kindliness that can lead 
the way to that symmetry of life in us that will 
one day make possible the realization of human 
brotherhood. 


“So many gods, so many creeds, 
So many paths that wind and wind 
While just the art of being kind 
Is all this sad world needs.” 


313 


XII 
THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


ea turn away at last from all the theo- 
i Ygsi4| logical questions involved in the pres- 
“i ent controversy within ‘the churches 
to consider what is, after all, the only 
real fundamental question in religion, namely, 
What are the truths men live by? We have 
taken the position in previous chapters that none 
of these questions, as they are being so hotly 
debated today, go to the heart of religion, that 
they only represent the imperfect rationaliza- 
tions of men, past or present, about religion, that 
religion itself is an experience and that, there- 
fore, these questions of theology are in no sense 
synonymous with religion. But this is only half 
the story, and the least important part at that. 
If theology is what men speculate about, de- 
bate upon, and inevitably disagree over, and if 
the traditional theology of the old creeds has 
been hopelessly outgrown, in any literal sense, 
by the widening experience and deepening 
314 





THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


thought of men, then what does constitute re- 
ligion, what are its true sources, what are the 
religious needs of man? Much of what we have 
said thus far has been negative; it has been clear- 
ing the field of accumulated débris and useless 
underbrush, but the positive constructive task 
still remains. Unless we are content “to empty 
out the baby with the bath,” we must proceed 
now to discover what are the truths that men live 
by, whence do they spring, and what is their sig- 
nificance for us of today? 

If we can imagine some great catastrophe de- 
stroying every Bible, obliterating every creed 
and wiping out of existence every ecclesiastical 
institution, and still further, also destroying in 
living men every trace of memory of all these 
things—of all that religion has meant and been— 
would there be any place for religion in such a 
hypothetical age? Would there still be any need 
for religion, and if so, what would be its sources, 
with no Bible or creed or church of any kind to 
depend upon? Or, to take not a hypothetical 
but a purely realistic instance, of which there are 
multitudes all about us in this modern age: Here 
is a man to whom the Bible makes no appeal, for 
- whom the creeds have lost all meaning, and who 
no longer has any faith in the churches and their 

315 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


teachings—is there a place for religion in any 
sense in such a man’s life? He has turned his 
back on all the symbols and instruments of re- 
ligion as they exist in the community, but does 
this mean necessarily that he has lost all religion 
and that there is no longer any basis for religion 
in his life? Must he surrender religion as being 
only “the baseless fabric of a dream,” and put it 
- forever out of his life as he would any other su- 
perstition from the past? Or, can he discover 
elsewhere a new basis for religion, and on this 
new basis reconstruct his religious life, entirely 
apart if need be, from all the old doctrines and 
existing institutions of religion which have lost 
their meaning for him? 

It is obvious that the one and only place to 
which our hypothetical age that knows nothing 
about religion as it has been, or our actual man or 
woman who has outgrown the old religious 
conceptions, can turn in order to find any new 
basis for religion is to the real daily experience 
of living men and women. It is to our actual ex- 
perience, therefore, rather than to any Bible or 
creed or church, that I want to turn just now 
for the answer to our question: What are the 
truths that men live by? And when I say “ex- 
perience,’ I mean the general universal experi- 

316 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


ence of men, and not some particular experience 
like that, for example, which Professor James in 
his “Varieties of Religious Experience,” recog- 
nizes as “the mystical experience,’ and whose 
validity he accepts for certain types of mind, but 
which he admits is utterly impossible to the ma- 
jority of men. That there are “experiences” 
natural to certain psychological types and wholly 
unnatural to other types we know to be true; but 
it is to none of these particular “experiences” 
that I want now to appeal, but to the common, 
fundamental and universal experience of all 
men. When we turn to this universal human 
experience we find that the first truth men live 
by is: 

1. That there are things in human experience 
that make life worth living. In Millet’s well- 
known painting, “The Angelus,” we have one of 
the great pictures of modern times, not so much 
perhaps because of its artistic execution as be- 
cause it symbolizes the fundamental experiences 
in man’s life. As you will recall, the picture rep- 
resents a furrowed potato field. In the fore- 
ground stand with bowed heads two figures—a 
man and a woman. At their feet are the imple- 
'ments of their toil—a barrow, a potato fork and 
a basket. Far away on the horizon rises the 

317 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


squat tower of a little church from which the 
Angelus has just sounded the hour for evening 
prayer. And over it all is diffused a sense of 
quiet peace and beauty. This is all there is to 
the picture, and yet how eloquently it sets forth 
the fundamental experiences of human life! 
The implements of daily toil symbolize work, the 
man and woman together speak of love, the 
bowed heads and the little church in the distance 
suggest reverence, and the peace and quiet of the 
scene breathe a sense of beauty deeper than 
words to express. Work, love, reverence and 
beauty—while these are not the only worth-while 
experiences in our lives, who of us is there that 
will not admit that these things are fundamental 
and typical of the experiences that do make our 
lives worth the living? 

The constant theme underlying all of Maillet’s 
paintings is this: “Man goeth forth to his labor 
from morning until evening.” But it is some- 
thing more than “the dignity of labor’ that he 
seeks to depict; it is the primacy of work in hu- 
man life, the inevitableness of work for human 
beings, the fact that life, if it be really life, is — 
work. The body is made for action, and wastes 
away without it. Psychology proves that the 
same holds true for the mind, and that sooner 

318 


THE TROTHS MEN LIVE BY 


or later our impulses and emotions, our ideas and 
thoughts, must find expression in actual con- 
crete action. We were not made to be idle either 
in body or mind, and it is only the abnormal or 
diseased person who can even pretend to be con- 
tent with a life of inactivity. The great ma- 
jority of us would go mad if it were not for our 
work with its constant demands upon time and ° 
strength and ability. It is in our daily work— 
in the things we do—that we learn and grow and 
develop our latent powers. 

This is not to say that we are all happy in our 
work, or that it is yielding us all that it might in 
the way of development. In a perfectly organ- 
ized society there would be none of the misfits 
that constitute the tragedy in human society. 
But the artist would be doing artistic work, the 
scholar would find his natural place, the inven- 
tor would not be slaving for a machine, the 
writer would not be footing up figures in some 
office. Psychological tests and vocational guid- 
ance are but just beginning their great task of 
helping individual boys and girls to know the 
kind of work for which they are naturally fitted, 
and then, to prepare themselves in the fullest 
possible way to do that work. One of the great- 
est problems confronting this machine age is how 

319 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


to get the industrial work of the world done with- 
out stultifying the powers and dwarfing both 
mind and body of the industrial worker, as we 
do today. The problem must be solved, if we 
are to have any regard for the human personality, 
but its solution lies in readjustments'and changes 
in the conditions under which the work is done 
so as to satisfy the physical and psychological 
needs of human nature, coupled with the fitting 
of the worker to his task, and not in the doing 
away with work, even if that were possible. 
Fortunate, indeed, is that man who has found the 
work he is fitted for, the work that calls out the 
best that is in him, the work that demands not the 
least, but the most of time and energy, for it is 
only in such work that we find our truest happi- 
ness and our highest development. 

It needs no argument to prove that love fur- 
nishes one of the most worth-while experiences 
of life. ‘To love and to be loved, if not by many 
then by the few, or even by some single individ- 
ual; how this alone makes all the difference be- 
tween real living and mere existence! It may 
be the love of husband for wife or wife for hus- 
band, of parents for children or children for 
parents, or of friend for friend. And when this 
natural human love seems to be thwarted or de- 

320 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


nied, there are always other people and little 
children to whom one’s love instinctively goes 
out; and when the response that we have the right 
to expect fails us even here, there is still the 
dumb, faithful dog whose devotion is unfailing, 
the love for nature, or books, or for some great 
cause, which, if it does not take the place of the 
human love, is, nevertheless, in many lives, a 
rich compensation for that other love which we 
have somehow missed in life. So long as there is 
some one, or some thing left for us to love, life 
is still worth the living whatever else may have 
been denied us. It is only when we come to feel 
that no one cares for us, and that there is no one 
left who either wants or needs our love that life 
loses for us its meaning. 

“The mind has a thousand eyes 

The heart but one, 


Yet the light of the whole life dies 
When love is done.” 


Reverence is also one of the universal experi- 
ences. All men do not reverence the same things 
-nor do they express their reverence in the same 
way. But the man who does not revere some- 
thing is less than human. Not to revere some- 
thing that is higher than oneself is not to look up 
and beyond oneself. It is to be contented with 

321 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


oneself as he is, to be self-complacent and self- 
satisfied, to know or care about nothing higher 
and better than he already possesses, to live in 
this world of wonder and mystery and never be 
moved by it all; it is never to aspire, never to 
reach out toward the heights beyond. If such a 
man exists, he is a fit candidate for some asylum. 
The deepest thing in us is our discontent, at 
times if not habitually, with ourselves as we are, 
and our earnest aspiration toward the things we 
revere. | 
Sometimes we call the object of our reverence 
“God,” or Truth, or Goodness, or Nature, or 
the great Personalities of the past, or just Life. 
But whatever we call these objects we know that 
they represent something that lies beyond our 
present attainments, something that is higher and 
better than ourselves toward which we yearn. 
Sometimes our reverence finds expression in the 
common forms of worship, sometimes in the 
earnest search and delving after truth, sometimes 
in the silent “communion with nature,” some- 
times in the contemplation of the Great Lives » 
of all ages, often in quiet meditation when alone - 
with our ideals. Constituted as we are, we must 
needs revere the highest, in whatever form it 
may be presented to us. This is what it means 
322 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


“to walk reverently through every day.” Just 
because we are beings capable of growth, just 
because we are men and women in the making, 
we must aspire and reach forth to that which 
lies beyond; and the objects of our aspiration 
are the things we truly revere. 

But if the experiences of work and love and 
reverence are universal, Just as universal is man’s 
sense of the beautiful, though it is often inarticu- 
late. We are told that art is long, but it is cer- 
tainly sure; for it is the expression of man’s 
fundamental demand for life in its beauty that 
fashions mere stones into temples and statues, 
mere sounds into music and melodious speech, 
mere paint into pictures, and articulate thought 
into literature. To make all of life more beau- 
tiful by replacing all that is ugly and unsightly 
and hideous by new forms of beauty has been 
the more or less conscious striving of man from 
the beginning. The passionate search for beauty 
is as striking as the search for truth or goodness. 

The simple fact is that Beauty’s secret is still 
her own, and we receive her message and respond 
to it, not because we understand it, but only 
. because we must—something in us responds in- 
stinctively to beauty’s call. “Beauty,” said 
Hegel, “is merely the Spiritual making itself 

323 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


known sensuously.”’ It is in this profound sense 
that “beauty is truth and truth is beauty.” It 
was of this inner truth of beauty that St. Augus- 
tine cried in a moment of lucid vision, “Oh, 
Beauty, so old and yet so new, too late have I 
loved thee.” We are all, whether we are con- 
scious of it or not, on the ceaseless quest for the 
beautiful; and in the play experiences, the leisure 
hours of our lives, we pursue the quest even more 
ardently than in our work. 

These, then, are fundamental and universal 
experiences in human life that may be taken 
as typical of those things that make hfe worth 
the living, whatever the other conditions of life 
may be. In our work, our loves, our capacity for 
reverence, and our sense of the beautiful we 
possess in experience the actual knowledge of 
things that are worth while, and which we feel 
instinctively give meaning and significance to our 
lives. 

But this is not all; in fact, it is only the smallest 
part of the meaning of these fundamental ex- 
periences. As we begin to reflect we soon dis- 
cover that through each one of these experiences 
we are lifted out of our individual selves into 
wider relations that transcend the individual. At 
the outset wesmay say, “my work, my love, my 

324 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


reverence, my sense of beauty,’ and these ex- 
periences may seem wholly personal and private 
and isolated; but we do not go very far before 
we perceive that “my work, my love, my rev- 
erence, my sense of the beautiful” bring me into 
direct and immediate touch with the work and 
love and reverence and beauty of countless 
others. And this leads us to the second truth 
men live by, namely: 

2. That these worth-while things in life tran- 
scend the individual. These experiences are so- 
cial as well as individual. If I work with my 
hands, I discover that I am dependent on a vast 
network of social and economic relationships if 
I am to do my work successfully—organizations, 
factories, tools, raw materials, facilities for dis- 
tribution, the demand for my labor, markets, 
etc., etc. The same thing is true if I belong to 
the class of merchants, bankers, salesmen, clerks, 
bookkeepers, truck drivers, etc. I am dependent 
on a complicated and elaborate system of social 
relationships; and my ability, my desire, my ac- 
tual work are only effective as I can make a 
satisfactory adjustment of myself to these re- 
. lationships. 

If my work is more strictly mental, that is, if 
I belong to one of the so-called professions, I do 

825 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


not escape in any sense these manifold relation- 
ships. If I write a book or preach a sermon or 
try a lawsuit or treat a patient or lecture in a 
class-room, still, I am dependent for the processes 
of thought, for the methods employed, for the 
very ideas I express, to countless others who have 
gone before me. My professional training is the 
result of the thinking of my teachers, of the books 
I have studied, of the general cultural life with 
which I have come in contact. To use my train- 
ing effectively I must make proper adjustment 
with my age, my community, my clientele, my 
constituency, my customers, my patients, etc. In 
a narrow sense my work may be individual, that 
is, it may be colored by my particular individ- 
uality, but in the broader sense my work is only 
possible, it can only become effective, in just the 
degree that I enter intelligently into these mani- 

fold social relationships of every kind. 
Obviously, again, my love, which usually be- 
gins as the most intensely personal thing, always 
leads on to the higher social plane. It is of the 
very essence of love to lift one out of self; the 
going forth of love, in any form, is always a 
going out of self—to another. Who of us has 
not watched with amusement and delight the first 
signs of the awakening of love in some self- - 
326 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


centered youth or maiden? With the coming of 
love, self is forgotten, and one begins to think, 
to do, to sacrifice for the other as he has never 
done formerly. The parents’ love for the child 
means a still further widening of love’s boun- 
daries. Friendship, especially if it is not limited 
to one group or class, lifts one still farther above 
the individual plane. And, thus, as love grows 
and widens its range of self-giving, the individual 
is transcended more and more, until in its highest 
and noblest forms, love comes to mean the living 
of one’s life consciously in union and fellowship 
with all who live and aspire everywhere. 

In a slightly different, but no less real way, do 
reverence and the sense of the beautiful lift us 
out of the narrow boundaries of the self and make 
us know ourselves as members of a vast com- 
munity of those who also revere the highest and 
seek the beautiful. At first the things we rev- 
erence and the beauty we admire seem to be our 
own private discoveries, until we come to realize 
that we are only individual members of a vast 
company of those who revere the highest, and 
that they, too, look in reverence toward the same 
essential things that compel our reverence; that 
all men are seeking the beautiful, and that in its 
essential aspects they find their satisfaction 

327 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


pretty much where we find it. More than that, 
we discover that the objects of our reverence 
and the secret places of beauty have been given 
to us through the profoundest thinking, the loft- 
iest visions, the heroic sacrifices of the noblest 
lives in every age and clime; and as we con- 
template these lives, or read their books, or gaze 
upon their pictures and statues, or listen to their 
music, that which has been inarticulate in our 
own souls hitherto, becomes, under their influ- 
ence, articulate and meaningful; and as our whole 
being goes forth in response to what they have 
inspired, we find ourselves becoming one with 
that great company of prophets and sages, of 
poets and seers, of martyrs and saints of all the 
ages. 

Reflection, therefore, shows us that these fun- 
damental and universal experiences of work, love, 
reverence and beauty are not only worthwhile, 
but that they transcend the individual, they lead 
us directly into manifold social relationships, they 
reveal a thousand and one influences and forces, 
as well as other individuals, upon whom we are 
all dependent, and with whom we are all inex- 
tricably bound together. In a word, while these 
experiences are in a sense individual, in a deeper 
sense they are social experiences; and thus life 

328 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


in its fundamental aspects becomes for us a 
social rather than an individual thing. 

But as we reflect still further, we discover that 
these universal experiences also transcend the 
social; they do not find their complete fulfillment 
either on the individual or the social plane; they 
seem to suggest something still higher, something 
that lies still beyond. And this leads us to the 
third truth men live by, namely: 

38. That these worthwhile things in life tran- 
scend present achievements both in the life of the 
individual and also in the life of mankind. Or, 
to put it into other words, the human needs which 
these experiences reveal find their satisfaction | 
neither in the individual nor the life of society as 
it actually is, but reach on inevitably into the ideal 
realm. The most important thing about any man 
is his dream; his dream of his own future. We 
understand this when we look at such lives as 
Demosthenes or Napoleon or Roosevelt. Demos- 
thenes stammered, but he dreamed of becoming a 
great orator; because of his dream he became 
the most eloquent speaker of ancient times. The 
young and sickly Napoleon dreamed of conquer- 
ing the world, and he nearly succeeded. Roose- 
velt was a weakling in body and only average 
otherwise, but he dreamed of becoming “an all- 

329 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


around and complete human being.” But what 
we do not always see is that every human being 
has a dream of himself. One man dreams: “I 
will be rich.”” Another: “I will rule others.” A 
third dreams of becoming an inventor. Still 
another longs to become the great artist. So 
every man dreams his dream of the future, and 
if he dreams intensely enough and has the will 
and persistency to translate his dream into some 
degree of reality, his dream becomes the deter- 
minative force of his life. 

But actually, these dreams, in most cases, are 
not what they appear to be. If they were clearly 
understood they would all be found to be pretty 
much alike. What every one of these dreams 
really says is this: “I want to be more than I 
am. I want to be more wise, more influential, 
more happy. I must, in some way, be more. And 
what does this “more” really mean? It means 
the instinct for self-development. It means that 
the first and fundamental law in human nature 
is the law of growth. And the person who is most 
truly alive is the one who is most keenly con- 
scious that he is here to grow from more to more. 
This means that the man who is awake, alert 
and conscious of his possibilities is never satisfied 
with what he is; he is forever pressing forward 

330 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


after the more he believes he can yet attain. He 
creates his ideals, and he lives by his ideals. In 
fact, his real life is ived much more in the realm 
of his ideals than it is in the realm of actualities. 
For he has caught a great vision of what his life 
may be. He has dreamed his dream of what 
he can become. The inspiration for each day’s 
striving comes through his ideals. He will go 
without comforts, he will even deny himself ne- 
cessities, he will burn the midnight oil, he will 
make every sacrifice and endure all privations— 
and all for the sake of something that has no 
existence in fact, but whose reality lies wholly, 
as yet, in the realm of ideals. 

And it is these universal human experiences 
that he knows to be worthwhile—work, love, rev- 
erence and beauty——that lead him directly into 
this ideal realm. No man is ever satisfied with 
the quality of the work he does. He always 
knows that something more is possible—some- 
thing finer, better, nobler than anything he has 
yet done. His present failure to achieve what 
he deems the best of which he is capable is what 
goads him on to renewed effort; what he fails to 
achieve now, is what forces him into the realm 
of ideals in his work, whatever it may be. No 
man is ever satisfied with the quality or the quan- 

331 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


tity of the love he gives. In his love for wife 
or children or friends or humanity, every man is 
always conscious that vastly more is possible— 
that he is capable of a more unselfish, a less fitful, 
a wiser, a more disinterested, a more inclusive 
love than any that has as yet gone forth from 
his life. It is his failures and shortcomings in 
the love experiences of life that lift a man into 
the realm of ideals in his love aspirations. 

In the same way every man realizes that he 
falls far short in revering enough those things 
that are worthy of reverence. His reverence is 
spasmodic rather than habitual; he ‘is inclined to 
lose his grasp on the high through his daily con- 
tact with the low. The cares of life and the 
things of the material world seem to clog the 
channels through which his reverence should flow. 
He does not spend time enough in communion 
with the great lives, he does not read as he should 
the great books, he feels a disinclination for music 
and art though he knows that these feed the 
sources of reverence, he has little time left for 
quiet meditation and reflection. It is also true 
that man is forever unsatisfied in his quest for 
beauty. No one has ever exhausted the resources 
of beauty; no one has ever found all the beauty 
that his soul craves; we are all thirsting for the 

332 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


more of beauty that we feel still lies beyond. It 
is our conscious failures in the experience of rev- 
erence and in our search for beauty that urge 
us inevitably into the realm of the ideals. 

But if the individual experiences of these 
worthwhile things leave us forever unsatisfied 
and force us to create the ideal realm where we 
can dream our dreams and see our visions of 
what our lives might be, how much more true is 
it that the social experiences of work and love, 
of reverence and beauty also leave us crying out, 
often in anguish of spirit, against the actual con- 
ditions that exist—stupidity, aimlessness, selfish- 
ness, greed, needless cruelty, superficiality, hy- 
pocrisy, injustice and wrong in all their many 
forms. It is no wonder that Jesus dreamed his 
great dream of a Kingdom of God on earth, or 
that all lofty spirits, before and since, have shared 
his dream. Such lives have been compelled to 
create their visions of an ideal world by the un- 
just and brutal conditions of life about them. 
It is the actualities in the life of mankind that 
stir us up to “a divine discontent” and force us 
to create our utopias and to dream our dreams 
of a different and a better world for men. 

If we are perfectly satisfied in our individual 
lives with our work, our love, our reverence and 

333 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


our thirst for the beautiful, there would be no 
place for ideals. Or, if we were content with 
this world just as it is, and saw nothing that 
needed to be changed in the interests of truth or 
justice or love, then we would feel no urge to 
dream of a better world to be. It is Just because 
these fundamental and universal experiences that 
we feel to be worthwhile, both in their individual 
and social aspects, leave us forever unsatisfied 
and at the same time seem inevitably to point 
toward a more complete fulfillment, that we are 
forced to create the ideal realm where we find 
“God,” “the highest and best,” “the dream and 
the vision for life,’ without which life would be 
poor and meaningless indeed. And this leads us 
to the next truth men live by: 

4. In devoting himself to the realization of 
these ideal things both in his individual life and 
in the life of society, can man alone give signifi- 
cance and permanence to his existence. 'There is 
only one kind of death that is truly tragic, and 
that is the death of a man’s ideals. So long as 
one follows the gleam of his vision, so long as he 
refuses to surrender his ideals, so long as he 
earnestly seeks the realization of his dreams, so 
Jong as he lives true to the best and highest he 
sees, just so long his life possesses a significance 

334 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


that nothing else can give, a value from which 
no so-called outward “‘failure” can detract. And 
every man and woman knows from experience 
how true this is. The only real discouragement, 
the only fatal disillusionment in human life, is 
that which follows our own failure to be true to 
the highest of which we are capable. Even our 
mistakes and follies and sins can all be forgiven 
provided only we still persistently cling to our 
ideals. 


“True greatness consists not in never falling, 
But in rising every time we fall.” 


The only unpardonable sin I know is the sin of 
refusing to follow the light that shines for us, 
for this is the sin that puts to death our real and 
ideal self. ‘There is one further truth that men 
live by, namely: 

5. That man can actually achieve some meas- 
ure of success in the realization of his ideals here 
and now. In one of her “Dreams,” Olive 
Shreiner tells the story of a woman soon to be- 
come a mother who wanders out over the Afri- 
can veldt and is lost in the mist. After a time a 
shape appears out of the mist. “If I touch 
you,” it says, “your child will find wealth.” The 
woman shakes her head and the shape disap- 

335 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


pears. A second shape speaks: “If I touch you, 
your child will find fame.” Again the woman 
shakes her head. A third shape promises power. 
And so on. Finally a strange shape appears. 
‘And if I touch you,” it says, “your child shall 
have neither wealth, nor fame, nor power, nor 
success. But he will always see a light beyond 
the horizon, and he will always hear a voice call- 
ing him from behind the hills. And he will set 
out after the voice and the vision; but as he 
reaches them, lo! beyond the horizon a new light, 
and in his ears a new voice. And he must leave 
all and go.” And the woman murmured: “But 
what gift will my child receive?” “This,” an- 
swered the strange shape: “When he looks at 
the dust he will always see the beautiful in it. 
In the real he will see the dream.” And the 
woman sobbed out: “Touch me.” And the shape 
touches her and vanishes. 

This, as it seems to me, is a beautiful picture 
of the true idealist—to see the beautiful in the 
dust; to find the dream in the real. ‘There is an 
idealism that is unreal simply because it has no 
possible relation to the things that are. It may 
present a beautiful picture of an ideal state or 
person, but it fails to connect up in any way with 
the real world of human nature. It is out of 

336 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


such idealism that the classic utopias have been 
written all down through history. I would not 
deny that such utopian visions have a value. I 
believe they have; but their value does not con- 
sist in their capacity of being realized; they were 
never intended to be realized. They serve the 
twofold purpose of emphasizing the necessity of 
having ideals, and also of stimulating men to 
formulate ideals that can be realized. 

What the world needs is more than simply 
an idealism that is vague and detached from 
human nature, however beautiful it may be. 
The demand today is that men should “see life 
steadily and see it whole,” that they should know 
human nature for what it really is—its worst 
as well as its best—that they should become fa- 
miliar with all the facts and forces that are op- 
erating in the life of mankind, that they should 
understand the problems presented by this mod- 
ern age and all that is involved in them, and then, 
on the basis of this knowledge, that they should 
create such ideals for man’s life, both individual 
and collective, and so present them that men 
shall know themselves capable of beginning, at 
least, the realization of these ideals, and shall be 
compelled by the inherent power of the ideals 
to move in their direction. Using the phrase 

337 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


in the best, and not the debased sense, it is a 
practical idealism for which the world waits to- 
day. The leaders needed are the men and women 
who are every inch the idealists, and yet who 
have the great gift of seeing the beautiful in 
the dust, the dream in the real. ‘This ability is 
what constitutes the intelligent man of vision as 
opposed to the blind visionary. This attitude 
does not mean the compromise with the ideal, 
but it does demand patience, tact and love; it 
does require deep and broad knowledge of hu- 
man nature and of social forces; it does demand 
a technique and method, as well as a skill, that 
most idealists, as such, know little or nothing 
about. The idealist who can see the dream in 
the real is the one who, in spite of all untoward 
conditions and difficult obstacles, does find cour- 
age to persevere, in his conviction that progress 
is being made even when things look darkest. 
These, then, are the basic and universal hu- 
man experiences that reveal the religious needs 
of human nature. It is clearly obvious that, en- 
tirely apart from all theology or ecclesiasticism, 
these experiences of work and love, of reverence 
and beauty, lead every man inevitably into the 
realm of ideals, which is the realm where religion 
is born. Being constituted as he is, with his 
338 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


experiences what they are, and in a world lke 
this, if he reflects at all man cannot help being 
religious, though his religion may be of a very 
different type from that of either Dr. Straton or. 
Dr. Fosdick. When Sabatier says that “man is 
incurably religious,’ what he means is simply 
this, that no man, if he be worthy the name, can 
live his life apart from ideals, and religion is at 
the outset experience with ideals. But these 
ideals to which man’s experience inevitably lead 
him become, in turn, the basis of the broader, 
deeper and richer religious experience. 

For growing out of these basic experiences in 
human life come (1) the need of reflection. To 
go through life, as many do, without reflecting 
on one’s experiences, without ever pausing to in- 
quire as to their meaning, without seeking to 
ascertain their significance, is to abandon the use 
of reason in the interpretation of one’s own life, 
which only the foolish and utterly thoughtless © 
would think of doing. As we have seen, it is 
through reflection that a man discovers the things 
in his experience that are worthwhile. Through 
reflection he comes to see that these things are 
not only individual, but social. Through further 
reflection he finds that these same experiences 
lead on inevitably into the ideal realm, and that 

339 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


his life only possesses significance. as he devotes 
himself to the pursuit of the ideals. Still fur- 
ther thought upon his experience reveals to him 
that as he earnestly strives toward these ideals, 
some progress is actually made in their realiza- 
tion, that the dream does lie in the real. And 
all this is only a skeleton outline of the inter- 
pretation of the meaning of his experience to 
which still further thought will lead him. 

(2) There grows out of these experiences also 
the need of a vital faith. Not faith in the sense 
of an intellectual acceptance of some dogma or 
set of doctrines about religion. But faith as rep- 
resenting the sum total of a man’s entire attitude 
toward the ideal things of life; a faith in the 
reality of these ideals; a faith that no worthy 
force expended is ever lost, that no unselfish 
love expressed is ever futile. As Felix Adler 
recently put it, “the growing conviction and the 
clearer vision of the eternal spiritual universe as 
real.” It is the faith that Count Leo Tolstoi 
described as “the sense of God.” JHHowever we 
may prefer to phrase it to ourselves, we all mean 
by it the same thing: the power that brings unity 
into our inner life, and that gives stability, mean- 
ing and purpose to all we are and all we do, 
because we have glimpsed the ideal world. 

340 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


(3) And the third need growing out of these ex- 
periences is the need of devoted service. To prac- 
tice the thing we preach; to do the thing we 
talk about; to translate our ideals daily and 
hourly into the definite concrete acts; to give the 
cup of cold water as instantly as we would make 
the great sacrifice; to bring the beautiful out of 
the dust; to transform the real by our dream— 
this is to live the life of devoted service. 

The truths men live by, as we have discovered 
them growing out of actual universal human ex- 
perience, lead on naturally to, nay more, do they 
not make imperative, the religious life that con- 
sists of reflection on these experiences, of a liv- 
ing faith in the ideals to which these experiences 
inevitably lead, and of a life of devoted service 
in the realization of these ideals? I have said 
nothing of theology as such, nothing of ecclesi- 
asticism with its forms and rituals, its rites and 
ceremonies, nothing even of the Bible with its 
inspirations, for none of these, or all of them 
put together, constitute religion, though they are 
all outgrowths, in past ages, of religion. I have 

sought to interpret religion in its simplest and 

most fundamental terms. I have tried to show 

that its ultimate sources lie deep within human 
341 


IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN RELIGION 


- nature, that religion exists because of real and 
permanent needs in human nature, and that the 
religion needed today is the religion that can 
truly satisfy these human needs without insult- 
ing either man’s intelligence or his conscience. 
In the life of reflection, of a living faith in the 
ideal things, and of devoted service to humanity, 
I find the outline, at least, of a religion for to- 
day—a religion that grows naturally out of the 
actual universal experiences of living men and 
women. 

If I am, in any sense, correct in this analysis, 
if religion in its essence consists in the bringing 
together of these basic experiences of work and 
love, of reverence and the sense of beauty, lift- 
ing them above the plane of the routine and pro- 
saic, refining and dignifying them, interpret- 
ing more and more clearly their deeper mean- 
ing, and thus making religion one with all of 
life, then it must be clear, the true function of 
any religious organization is to teach and stim- 
ulate reflection on the experiences of life, to in- 
spire and strengthen a living faith in the ideal 
things of life, and constantly to lead men out 
into intelligent and practical forms of human 
service. | 

342 


THE TRUTHS MEN LIVE BY 


“And what is faith? The anchored trust that at the core of 
things 

Health, goodness, animating strength flow from exhaust- 

less springs; 

That no star rolls unguided down the rings of endless maze, 

That no feet tread an aimless path through wastes of 
empty days; 

That trusts the everlasting voice, the glad, calm voice 
that saith 

That Order grows from Chaos, and that life is born from 
death; 

That from the wreck of rending stars, behind the storm 
and scathe, 

There dwells a heart of central calm,—and this, and this 
is faith.” 


THE END 


343 


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